Twilight Youji
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: Weiss takes on an unauthorized mission.. And Youji gets hurt KO, leading into AY
1. Default Chapter

Twilight Youji By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kruez. I'm just writing cuz it's three in the morning and I can't sleep.  
  
Warnings: I make no claim that this is canon or has perfect grammar.  
  
Notes: Ne. come see my stuff at www.onepinkrose.com  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
They weren't angels. They weren't always nice when they came home from late night work. Okay. Ken and Omi were nice.  
  
The mission had been urgent. There were children involved and the nature of the crimes about to be committed enraged Youji, even though the females victims weren't old enough for Omi's attention, let alone Youji's. It had set them all on edge. It was the nature of evil.  
  
It was the nature of humanity, complex and without easy to draw lines sometimes. This mission hadn't come from Kritiker. It had come from a warning from Schwartz, with a photo of a young girl with long brown hair and hard to define eye color. Skinny and disassociated, she'd stared back at them from the photo. The note had read, "This is the great-great-great- grandmother of my love. She will die on September 19th if you do not intervene." Then it gave an address of a church. It was signed, The Oracle. They all knew who that was.  
  
All of them suspected they were being head fucked. Why didn't Schwartz go save the girl themselves? Ken started it. Wheedling Omi into researching the girl. It had snowballed from there. Six missing girls, all matching her description, from the last six years, and there were siblings of these children missing too. It didn't matter if Schwartz had set a trap for them. It didn't matter if Kritiker had not condoned the mission. Weiss was going to clean it up.  
  
Youji hated missions where things happened in front of children. Standing in the back of the green house, he covered his mouth, as if that could keep the bile from rising into it. He tried to remember what happened, but the last three or four hours of mission were fogging up for him now.  
  
Behind him, he heard Ken kick the door closed, heard Omi moan in his sleep. Omi had put in nearly forty-eight hours of pre-flight before this mission and Youji was glad he slept. There was something else, but he couldn't remember. "Kudou," Ken snapped. "You take the first shift. And don't give me any shit. Omi's exhausted."  
  
It was unspoken. It didn't need to be. Ken would sleep with Omi. They'd been sleeping together for nearly six months. Youji floated in the dizziness for a moment, his back to them, as he touched his side, the black, skin tight shirt he wore and brought his fingers away covered in dark, sticky dark. "Yeah, whatever Ken," he said, trying to figure when he'd gotten nicked.  
  
He didn't remember getting hit.  
  
"He's worked," Ken started to make a second assault on Youji's defenses, then realized the man had already agreed. "Thanks, Youji."  
  
"Go on. I've got to change before I open the shop. And I want to do it before Aya gets here."  
  
After Omi had collapsed at the end of the mission, Ken had wanted Aya's car. Aya had taken Ken's motorcycle. God fuck me, Youji thought, realizing he might have bleed in Aya's car.  
  
Ken carried Omi up the back stairs without another word. As soon as they were gone, Youji slipped out of his jacket. His left hand was going numb, heavy and rebellious. This made him slip out of the right side, then pull the jacket from the left. The arm looked okay, fingers looked okay, just numb like a jaw after the dentist's office.  
  
Getting his shirt off was harder than the jacket and in frustration he got a pair of pruning scissors and started cutting. Right up the middle, then, to the side, deciding to just cut through the short sleeve on his left arm. It was a damn shame, because he liked this shirt. There was a dart stuck in his belly, the oddest one, a quarter inch quarrel inbeded in his skin, into the muscle, eight long slender thorn like legs radiating from it, also piercing his skin. It was flush about though, as if it were, still sinking in. Didn't hurt. There was blood though, flowing down under the waist band of his pants. He didn't remember getting hit.  
  
Frightened, he reached for the intercom, hit Ken's buzzer, waited for an acknowledgement, groaned in frustration and hit Omi's. "Ken. Help me."  
  
Only static replied. The volume. They'd turned it down. "Ken," he yelled, holding the intercom button with one hand, touching the dart that had gotten him with his other hand. "Could use some help here!"  
  
How had he gotten hit? They'd been in a basement. Dark. Twenty some odd adults. A boy on the alter. The girl behind it. Youji remembered jumping the alter, shoving the man behind the girl. Remembered the man pulled a dagger. The girl grabbed a hold of his jacket, like she was going to hide behind him. He'd reached to her with his left hand. Yes, he remembered that much. She'd grabbed his hand. She'd been crying. He looked over his shoulder. It was a mistake.  
  
Next. He remembered. He remembered his garrote around the man's throat. Tightening until the man's Latin cursing was strangled away. The girl was behind him still. Her face pressed to his back. She was hiding. The dagger, dart, whatever it was screamed when he touched it. The scream radiated up his ribs, down to hips, red acid hot. "Owww," he moaned.  
  
The back door opened. Aya threw Ken's keys down on the potting bench glared at Youji. "I've told you. Don't change in the green house. Go upstairs."  
  
"Can't," Youji snapped back, baiting Aya, just for the fun of it. Memories were dropping out of his mind now, slipping away like sand. Quite vividly, he did remember wanting to see those lips smile. Remembered planning to catch those lips in a kiss. "Smile at me, lover," he said, words strained, smeared out like paint gone thin.  
  
"What is your problem," Aya snarled, coming around the bench between them, halting.  
  
Blood had pooled around one of Youji's boots now, smeared across pale abdomen where his fingers had touched. "I don't remember," Youji said, honestly. "I only remember wanting to see you smile."  
  
"Why," Aya said, moving quickly towards Youji, though the taller man didn't know why. He liked having his lovers hands on him, one arm wrap around his waist, fingers holding his pants. They were lovers. Youji didn't remember it, but he wanted it that way.  
  
"Ken! Omi!" Aya bellowed, as he lowed Youji to the green house floor. "Now!"  
  
Youji's fingers had taken hold of Aya's jacket, but Aya didn't pry him loose. Aya knew they weren't lovers. What he hadn't known, was that Youji leaned that way. He pressed his fingers to the fluttering pulse at Youji's wrist, watching it at his throat, watching his eyelids twitch slightly. "Ken! Hurry up! Youji's down."  
  
If it had been a normal mission, they could have just called for assistance from their normal Kritiker medical team. It wasn't though. They'd gone without permission and this was going to get them all in trouble. "Youji, you'd better wake up if you want to see me smile." 


	2. Aiding the Enemy

Twilight Youji 2/? By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz.  
  
Warnings: I make no claim that this is canon or has perfect grammar.  
  
Notes: Ne. come see my stuff at www.onepinkrose.com  
  
Aya glared up as Ken came back down the stairs.  
  
"What is it?" Ken asked, flipping on the light, then stopping dead.  
  
It was not what he expected to find Aya on his knees by Youji, blood splattered very where, and Youji laying there, pale and breathing so shallowly.  
  
It had always been a possibility.  
  
"Youji's wounded." Aya said, flatly. The initial shock had begun to fade back. "Give me the phone, Ken?"  
  
"But you can't call for medical back up," Ken said, his words chilling as he realized the truth of it, even as he said it.  
  
"I can call an ambulance." Aya's fingers took hold of the cordless phone like it could be a sword hilt.  
  
"Youji doesn't want to go to jail, Aya," Ken pointed out, as he squatted down on the other side of the blond and started looking at the 'thing' embedded in his flesh. Cautiously, he touched Youji's belly far enough away from the wound, exploring. The spidery legs actually picked up from where they'd dug into Youji's flesh and moved, after a couple claw-like swipes at Ken's fingers. Ken's eyes went wide like glow in the dark soccer balls. "OH fucking hell!"  
  
Then the phone rang.  
  
Aya nearly dropped the phone. His eyes were locked the edge of the puncture, where a black pus was seeping up. "Koneko Flowers," he clipped the words though.  
  
"Do not touch it," Crawford sneered, sounding colder than Aya by a dozen degrees. "You saved mine. I will help you save yours."  
  
"My what?" Aya snarled, rising and taking a couple paces away from Youji. "Do not touch the object," he commanded Ken. To Crawford he hissed, "What is it?" "It is a cursed stake. That Balinese is alive at all is proof that he is foolishly valiant. Do not consider this more than a truce. Two of my agents should be arriving shortly. Allow them to do what they do."  
  
"Why? Why are you doing this?" Aya turned back to where Youji lay. The blond was growing restless, head rocking, the fingers that had been holding Aya's coat clawing lightly at the floor. A chasm cracked through Aya's soul then, as he realized that he did not want Youji to die.  
  
"No matter what a man has done before, Fujimiya, sometimes a vision will call a man's soul to a different path. I want what I have always wanted. I just understand that it is to be had differently. You will understand in time. You were in the vision."  
  
"Youji?" Aya squatted down, laid the backs of his fingers against Youji's cheek, calming him.  
  
"The future is like billiard balls. One can see where they're going, but not always where they finish. For today, trust my team."  
  
"Ahhgg," Aya gasped. The fingers that had been against Youji's cheek, now pressed to his own temple. There was the most vivid 'memory' in his mind of him pinning Youji to the counter, letting the blond's pants down, ramming home as the blond cried out in pain. Aya did drop the phone. He fell back against the work bench behind him, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. "Ahhhhhh."  
  
The back door opened then, as if the lock had been no ore than a null password. "Hello, kitties," Schuldig purred, crossing in humanly fast to pick up the phone. "Hey, we're here. Kitty red and I shared a pretty day dream already."  
  
The smirk evaporated. The telepath leaned away from the phone, even though he just took it with him, evading Crawford, even though he knew he couldn't. Simultaneously, the pain in Aya's head evaporated, the 'memory' faded into nothing more than a bad commercial. Youji had grown more restless though, and Ken was holding his hand so it didn't reach to the chunk of wood stuck in his belly.  
  
Aya moved forward again and caught Youji's chin. "Youji, try to relax. We're working on helping."  
  
"Aya," he whispered, "Aya, hurts."  
  
"I expect. Open your eyes." Aya commanded, steeling himself to give Youji what he'd wanted.  
  
Everything Youji did carried a kind of indolent grace that set him apart from the stress and demands of life, as if he were a golden tiger just laying around in the sun, waiting for the moment he felt like striking.  
  
A golden lion knight, Richard the Lionhearted reincarnated, Aya mused. There was a time when Aya was a school boy, books and poetry, history and accounting. Youji reminded him of that, so deeply that Aya didn't even realize it.  
  
His hand on Youji's face, fingers on his cheek thumb on his chin, near his lips. "Open your eyes."  
  
Those dark honey lashes trembled, then lifted, like a proud lion just slowly yawning. The green eyes they revealed though glazed over, pupils wide open, making them look almost black, and over the whites, mixed with the tears filling them, a dark oily scum pooled, shifted, slipped down his cheeks when Youji blinked. Confusion bled Youji's voice into uneven strained tones, ruined the mellow coolness that was always there, "Aya  
  
Aya smiled, forced it, lips twitching, but lifting into a smile. "What happened? Why didn't you tell us you'd gotten hit?"  
  
"I got hit," Youji asked, eyes slowly blinking loosing focus.  
  
Schuldig reached down and touched his fingers to Youji's forehead, smirked at Aya. Youji went completely limp, lips parting slightly. "It's better that way. You wouldn't want to be awake while we rip out your guts, would you?"  
  
Rage, unreasoning rage, lit Aya's eyes. "You will not hurt him."  
  
"Of course not," Schuldig sneered, "Crawford would be very pissed."  
  
Nagi and Farfarellow let themselves in the open door. They stood there, just watching for the moment, slender dark evil, and tall golden insane evil. Schuldig, as if he couldn't help himself, smacked Youji's unconscious cheek, and stood. "Hurry up and retrieve the akron," he snapped, as if that's all he wanted anyway.  
  
Ken and Aya looked at each other, weighed options. Nagi lifted his chin. "I will do my best to save his life."  
  
"Me too," Farfarellow nearly chirped, trying to sound harmless maybe, but only making himself sound like a stoned cartoon character. "Just cut the bad thing right out of him."  
  
Schuldig groaned. "Don't make me have to knock them all out! It gives me a headache."  
  
Aya reached for his sword.  
  
"Really, we were told to help," Schuldig said, finding the role of the sane peacemaker a difficult fit. "Give us five minutes. We'll be gone, and if Balinese dies, Crawford will beat the fuck out of us.  
  
"I don't find that comforting," Aya frosted.  
  
Schuldig smirked, but then Nagi was nudging Ken out of the way. "Be quiet," he snapped, impatient. The small telekinetic closed his eyes and Youji groaned. Aya grabbed the ands nearest to him, held it tight. Slowly the wood thing in Youji started to rise. Farfarellow moved in behind Nagi, a small golden dagger out, clean of blood, sparkling in the early sun light. Ken scrambled back, as Farfarello took his place. The little slender legs dug into Youji's flesh, forcing a cry from him.  
  
"What's happening," Omi asked from the stairs. "Ken!"  
  
"Shut up!" Nagi hissed, sweat breaking out on his forehead, nose. "Cut!"  
  
Farfarello swiped with the dagger he held, five quick little V shaped nicks around the circumference of the thing's hold on Youji's flesh. Aya held Youji's hand as his body arched, protested the new little wounds. The thing in him shot upwards though, spinning, droplets of blood and black ooze splattering from it, the point like relaxing octopus legs, with only the tips twitching. Nagi bowed his head, eyes still closed, panting hard now. "Now!"  
  
Schuldig jumped forward, hands snapping a box he'd gotten from out of no where around the thing, enclosing it in a white stone casket. "Gottcha, baby."  
  
Youji woke then, gasping for breath, just trying to get enough to scream. Nagi collapsed against Farfarello, who caught him up, but didn't stop licking the last of Youji's blood from his blade. Ken snarled in warning and suddenly the three of them were by the door. Schuldig bowed in mock gratitude. Maybe it was the need to prove his power, or explain away any kindness to the enemy, but Schuldig drawled, "Thanks so much for helping us out. None of us could have pulled off the whole knight protector thing. This damn demon would have happily killed any of us, you see? Only one of you sweet boys, who would be willing to give your life to save the innocent and weak sacrifice could survive and come away with the akron. So thanks again. We needed this."  
  
Ken clenched his fists, lips twitching.  
  
Nagi struggled out of Farfarello's hold, onto his own feet again. "Don't let him bleed to death, die of infection." There was a grudging respect in Nagi's voice though. "Don't use any narcotics."  
  
"Why not," Omi said, gathering information, fully awake now.  
  
"Just for a while," Nagi said, head up, but body stiff, as if he just dared his teammates to hit him. "The demon will be hunting him, to get it's heart back."  
  
"Oh this is too weird," Ken said.  
  
"Yeah," Farfarello purred. "If it gets too intense, give us a call. I would like to watch Nagi trying to stop the demon from eating a blond kitty."  
  
Emotion didn't even touch Nagi's face. A person could read what they wanted into the look he gave Youji, half terror, half hero worship. "I'm leaving."  
  
"Ja," Schuldig said, "Me too. Farf, no playing when Crawford said no."  
  
One eye smiled and he shrugged. He slipped the gold dagger back into its sheath. "God's gonna be so hurt by what he's going to become."  
  
Then they were gone. And Youji started to convulse. 


	3. heart wraith

Twilight Youji 3/? By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz.  
  
Warnings: Occult and yaoi  
  
Notes: Ne. come see my stuff at www.onepinkrose.com  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
New sunlight filtered unevenly through the windows. Youji hadn't washed them well. Aya ran his thumb over Youji's lips. He didn't care that Youji hadn't washed the windows as he'd been nagged to. "We need to get him upstairs. Omi, put that plastic sheet on my bed. We need medical supplies. Do we still have any blood left?"  
  
Probably the only florists in the world to keep half a hospital crash kit in the attic. "Why not take him to the white room?"  
  
"We'll move him to your room," Ken said watching Aya's expression closely as he said it, "After we've got him patched a little, uh?"  
  
"Why my room?" Aya snapped, unaware, or covering, that he'd said his room in the first place. "Ken, get him from that side."  
  
Aya already had his arm under Youji's, one hand firmly gripping the waistband of his pants. Ken grunted, either words mangled behind his teeth, or Youji was heavier than he'd expected, as he got into the same position as Aya, arm under Youji's hand on his back, fist full of pants. "Yeah, Aya. On the count of three. One. Two. Three."  
  
They stood, hauling Youji up between them. Youji's head rolled in Aya's direction, then his chin went down to his chest. He whimpered, a soft delicate sound, as if his breath were as delicate as cigarette smoke. "Fuck me," he groaned. "I did not drink enough to feel like this much shit."  
  
"You got hurt," Omi said, following them along, as he tried to catch Youji's moving feet. "We're taking you up to the white room."  
  
"Oh, no," Youji whined. "I hate that room! It's not that bad. Just let me down."  
  
"You," Aya snarled, not the slightest tenderness, unless you knew hot to read him, "Are the only person I've ever known who can whine about being helped. It is bad. You've got a whole in your side the size of a golf ball."  
  
"It's okay, Youji-kun," Omi said, lifting Youji's feet, one booted leg under either arm. "We're gonna get you fixed right up!"  
  
"Good," Youji with cheerful sarcasm. "I got first shift in the dungeon today."  
  
"Shut up, Youji," Aya said, kicking the door at the top of the stairs open.  
  
"Oh man! I gotta fix that now," Ken growled. "It's not my fault he got hurt and now you got this whole nurse's heart thing going on! Careful with the house, will you?"  
  
Youji tried to look at Ken, but all he managed was getting his head back, dangling sort of, eye half crossing, not focusing. "I'll try not to bleed, Ken-kun."  
  
"You do that," Ken snapped, shifting his hold on Youji until the man cried out and they all stopped dead in their tracks, Youji panting hard a new sheen of sweat over his face, back. The sweat made him slippery, but he was bleeding again. Bright red on pale skin. "I'm sorry, Youji."  
  
"Hurry up," Aya urged, moving again. They had one more set of stairs to go up. Putting the white room in the attic was their subconscious protest that they'd never need it, despite what they did for a living, Aya guessed.  
  
By the top of the stairs, he knew for a fact that Kuduo Youji was heavy! They had to count to three again, to lift him high enough to get him on the table. Thoughtfully, it was a table with one of those little moats around it, to catch the blood. Aya hated this room.  
  
Youji's opinion didn't matter as he'd passed out again, leaving the three of them standing around, silently arguing over who was going to do what. Omi broke the silence. "I'll start the IV. Ken, we should try to clean the wound. Get those bottles of saline. Aya, take his boots and, uh, pants off."  
  
Aya went pale this time. Everything within him went mission oriented. Boots first, he unbuckled the straps at the top, mid calf, and ankle. Youji wore lavender socks; silk knit, traditional Japanese socks which clung to the big feet as Aya tugged. The socks turned out to be a laundry accident, lavender splotches mixing with purple and the very slightest hint of white. Aya threw the sock towards the back of the room and went to work on the other boot. This sock had drying splotches of red at the top that seemed entirely surreal. A blond killer with ruined bloody socks. "I need something to cut his pants."  
  
Omi, who was looking for a second vein to try in Youji's hand, pointed towards a wall of sterile sealed tools. He found a pair of scissors, meant for gauze or so, but looked strong enough to take care of Youji's black stretchy pants. "We don't really know what we're doing."  
  
"Sure we do," Omi said, now putting a bit of tape over the needle he'd gotten into Youji's hand. "We all had the classes. And look! I've got the IV started. Do you remember what blood type he is?"  
  
"No," Aya said, trying not to grind his teeth. He was good with sharp objects though, and one leg of Youji's pants lay open to the waist, including the slender purple velvet string that had held Youji's thong underwear in as much place as Aya thought those things could hold. "Use the info cards, Omi."  
  
"Do you think he needs blood?" Ken asked, being very careful as he irrigated the wound with a square plastic bottle of saline. "It doesn't look all that deep to me. And I think the bleeding has stopped."  
  
"Look at your shirt," Omi snapped.  
  
Too much snapping going on, Aya thought. There was a lot of blood on Ken's shirt, trailing in to the white room, pooling in the ridiculous little moat around Youji. That much blood should be fatal, Aya thought, numb, distant. He'd just finished opening the other side of Youji's pants, but not started peeling them away, when he got to where Ken stood. Refusing to have expectations, he took hold of Youji's, counted his pulse. Seventy wasn't so bad, and even though he'd tried not to have expectations, that wasn't what he'd expected. The wound, as Ken rinsed off flakes of dried blood and more of the black ooze, did not look as deep as Aya had expected either. He leaned, scowled.  
  
From the very center of it, there was a trickle of shiny black pus. The rest looked like clean meat. He wondered if Youji's intestines were punctured, and that was the source of the black. Watching very carefully though, he was fairly certain he could watch it fill in. "Ken, stop."  
  
Youji took a deep breath, calm and painless. Aya looked at his face, moved closer to the head of the table. Glassy. Youji's skin looked glassy, his lips shiny like when he'd gone clubbing that time, his lips looking like some magazine model. Aya checked his pulse again, at his throat this time. Seventy-six, but steady, strong. Impulsively, Aya reached out to touch Youji's hair, to move it away from his face. "Youji, wake up."  
  
He simply took another breath and leaned into Aya's touch. Aya wanted a moment then, just to pull them out of time, he and Youji, to have them both well, awake, for just one moment so they could be completely fearless and tell each other what truth's lay in their hearts. The heart, it was the seat of the soul, and Aya wanted to open his to this man, even if only for a moment.  
  
The air nearer to the door they'd come in shimmered like a heat mirage, then opened. Soundless, the shift caught all their attention. A woman formed in the mirage, curvy, in blue jeans and a tee-shirt, brown hair laying around her shoulders, those same glassy lips. "Where is it," she asked, stepping into the room and into the appearance of solid flesh and blood. Her accent was lisping, a little New York, a little Irish. "I know it's been used, and I need it back. Give me Akron's heart."  
  
"What are you," Omi asked.  
  
"I was," she drew the words out, "an angel."  
  
Youji groaned, a bare heel digging in for leverage against the metal table he lay on, then slipping so he fell back against the surface. His heart rate was high again. Aya could see the pulse hammering at his throat, under impossibly pale skin. "We haven't got it," Aya said, one hand reaching back for a katana he'd not had time to take off. "Schwartz took it."  
  
"But I can smell it," she said moving closer, bare feet walking, but not touching the ground. "I can smell it, in him. He smells," she paused to look for a word, stilled in her movements to close to Aya that he could see the black veins under her skin, flashing like little black lightening strikes. "Angelic," she finally decided. "Angels don't use the Akron. Where is it?"  
  
Aya's blade made no sound as he pulled it a little from the sheath. "We told you. Schwartz took it. Do not touch Youji."  
  
"Or you'll what," she purred, her eyes brown, honey brown and snapping with bits of black lightening. She shoved a finger into Youji's wounded side and he screamed, back arching, cut pants falling away, as both his hands clawed at her unmovable arm. The scream sank into sobs as he couldn't draw enough breath to scream.  
  
Ken charged her. She held up her hand and he flew back into the wall, hit hard, and sank to the floor.  
  
"Ken!" Omi yelled, already on his way over the table to attack their intruder.  
  
Her hand circled over her head and Omi froze, one foot on the table, his punch pulled back, like a snap shot of an endlessly awkward pose. Even Youji's scream froze, mouth open, head thrown back, fingers frozen into claws. To Aya she spoke, as if she were imparting a great secret, chin down, eyes snapping in a black lightening storm. "Do you know what a wraith is?"  
  
"No." Aya said, forcing himself to breathe.  
  
"Your friend is not angry enough to become a demon. He has too much love and hope within him. He has too much pain to become angelic. He will become a wraith, feeding on those full of anger, killing any he touches." She tilted her head, stirred her fingers slowly in the hole in Youji's side. "Does your friend like to touch? Imagine if he can not die and yet he kills everyone he touches? He will become a heart wraith and eventually, in a century or two, he will become a demon, preying on those like he tried to save tonight."  
  
Aya said nothing. If he believed her or not, it made little difference.  
  
"If you bring me my husband's heart, I can free both of them from this curse. The object called Akron can do nothing good within this realm. Bring it to me within forty eight of your hours and I will free this one from the wraith curse. Just get it. I will return to you if you get it within time. The closer to the deadline you get, the less I will be able to lift the curse. So hurry little hero, but don't let him touch you."  
  
She pulled her fingers out of Youji; fingers clean of blood or any foulness. Time snapped back in place and Omi went over the table slugging. Aya stepped out of the way just in time as the youngest one of them hit the floor and skidded. Aya was more interested in Youji though, who was laying, panting, and awake. His lips were so glassy as to hint at transparency now.  
  
"Aya?"  
  
"Youji."  
  
The hole in Youji's side was healed without even a scar and his curls fell around his face, shimmering and clean. "I'm hungry."  
  
Aya tucked his fingers under his arms as Youji sat up. How did one tell the only person you wanted to touch that you die if you did. "Youji, listen to me." 


	4. We know where you were last night

Twilight Youji 4/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz.   
  
Warnings: None that I can think of  
  
Notes: Ne... come see my stuff at www.onepinkrose.com   
  
Twilight Youji  
  
They left the shop closed. Aya made the steak he'd been saving and set it and some of Ken's favorite baked fries in front of Youji. Neither of them had said anything.   
  
They were sitting there, not saying anything when Ken and Omi came in. Youji picked up a curly fry, twirled it around. "I'm sorry."  
  
"For what, Youji-kun? It's not your fault that you got hurt."  
  
He dropped the fry. "Whose fault is it then?"  
  
"It's just part of what we do," Aya said, sitting down with a cup of coffee. "Eat, Youji."  
  
"Don't tell me what to do," Youji snapped, putting his thumbs to temples. "Are you hurt, Ken?"  
  
"No, just a lump. Aya, you said you'd tell us about what she said."  
  
There wasn't much to tell. Heart wraith, just like he'd asked Omi to research, and that Youji shouldn't touch any of them, he also told them that they'd have to get that thing back from Schwartz.   
  
Omi poured himself a cup of coffee. "I looked up 'heart wraith'. I found some French references. It's confusing, if the references are to a town protector or to a hazard."  
  
"Oh you put that really nice, Omi-kun," Youji sneered, and forced the fry into his mouth, crushed it with his tongue, but he knew if he swallowed it, it would come right back up. So he spit it out, into his hand. "I'm going out back to smoke. You guys can sit here and decide what to do about me. We know how to get rid of bodies. It shouldn't be that hard."  
  
"Asshole," Ken snapped. "Don't you give a shit that we don't want you to be hurt or cursed? We're going to get the curse lifted."  
  
"I'm an asshole." Youji agreed, standing. "So don't bother. There is no point you going up against Schwartz. That thing will get stuck in one of you."  
  
"Youji," Aya called.   
  
The was a loneliness in Aya's voice, that Youji thought he might just be imagining because of his own loneliness. It was one thing to have no one to touch, hold, except strangers, just passing strangers, but that left the hope that he would have someone to hold him. To love him. He turned to Aya, regretted never telling the red head how beautiful he was or how many times the hope in Youji's life had come from thoughts of Aya. He dropped the fry into the trash. "Aya, I'm hungry. Do you understand? If I sit here, I'm going to reach out and take your hand."  
  
"She might have been lying," Aya said, following after Youji. "Schwartz has messed with our heads before."  
  
"Want to test it," Youji challenged, holding his hand up, fingers wide.   
  
Aya mirror him their palms closing till there was just a paper's distance between them. Warm and cold. "Youji I wouldn't let you hurt one of us. Don't go," Aya said, eyes meeting Youji's. Some understanding passed between green and violet. All the causal walls they'd built, anything short of life and death, stretched spider web thin and broke. "Don't go, Youji. I need you."  
  
"I felt happy all the times I thought about you. I'd watch you and I'd feel happy. I baited you now and then, just to see you blow up, so you'd pay attention to me. You know," Youji paused, stared at their hands, so very close to touching, and yet, not. "There were times I'd think about you, and come away actually liking myself, almost."  
  
"Youji," Aya whispered, "In 48 hours, we'll have the curse lifted."  
  
"Even if we could get that thing back from Schwartz, and I don't think they should have it, but what makes you think it shouldn't just be destroyed? We can't give it back to that demon."  
  
Silence boiled over in the kitchen. Youji pulled his hand back just a little, drew his fingers down, as if he were caressing Aya's hand, then turned his back on them and went down the hall towards his room.   
  
"He's right," Omi said. "We can't give it to that demon."  
  
"We can't just let him stay like this," Aya hissed. "He looks like he's turning to glass."  
  
Omi's pager went off. He yawned and rubbed one eye as he looked at. "We have a mission. She'll be here in twenty minutes."   
  
Ken groaned. "Let's all just decline and stay home and get some sleep."  
  
"I'll get Youji," Aya said.   
  
All of them were too tired to give anything much thought. The twenty minutes zipped by like flowers ate sunlight, just sucked all up. At the end of it, time found them all sitting in the briefing room. Ken and Omi sat on the couch. Aya stood behind it. Youji had a stool to himself and a cigarette behind his ear.   
  
From where Aya stood, his lips looked like rose colored glass.   
  
"As you can see, if these men complete their plan, there will be hundreds of thousands of casualties, fatalities. We must take out not only the five operatives placing the poison canisters, but also the leaders," As she spoke the images of the targets appeared on their screen.   
  
"When is the mission window?" Omi asked.   
  
"This morning."  
  
That whole silence boiling over thing happened again.   
  
She added, "We obtained this information last night and had Weiss not been out reaching unauthorized objectives, we could have started this mission with better planning. At least all of you are at full capabilities, not counting lack of sleep. If you had been unable to accept this mission, because of vigilante activities, the would have been consequences. Not to mention people dying in the subway today. Our jobs are to protect the innocent, not to go around doing the footwork of Schwartz."  
  
Omi colored, his nose twitching. Aya showed no sign of response at all. Youji though stood, pulled his cigarette down, eyes hooded for a moment. "That girl would have died last night. She was an innocent."  
  
Persia selects which fights you have the option of engaging in, not Crawford. By doing what you did, you ran a high chance of delivering a very powerful weapon into the hands of our enemies. The akron is what they were trying to acquire."  
  
"What is it," Omi asked so innocent that Youji could have sworn the kid knew nothing.  
  
"It is said to be the heart of an angel that was cut out by a sorcerer. To be stabbed by it is to become a wraith, though when used as a tool to commit a ritual sacrifice, it simply binds the soul so that Akron is bound to consume it. When he has consumed enough souls, their sorrow and pain will turn him into a demon, which can be controlled by the owner of his heart. The wraiths themselves are compelled to feed on human souls, until they become demons as well. An entire legion of demons controlled by one object. We have been seeking it's destruction for three centuries."  
  
"Was this angel married," Aya asked.  
  
Manx glared. "That is a more obscure part of the myth. The first person to be stabbed with the stolen heart was the angel's human lover, an acolyte who renounced her marriage to Christ the night before she was to become a full nun. It is said that she wanders e world in search of her lover's stolen heart and that it is she who creates the victims of the akron into wraiths."  
  
"What's a heart wraith," Youji asked.  
  
"Okay." Manx said, turning off the projector. "Who got stabbed?"  
  
Cigarette between his fingers, Youji raised his hand. "So what is a heart wraith?"  
  
"It is a victim of the akron that has too much love within them to become a full wraith. There is only one verifiable record of a heart wraith. It is believed that a heart wraith both feeds the tortured angel souls, and balances him with love, as the angel will the love that the wraith feels and receives, as well as a share of the souls from those the wraith kills. Did she say you were a heart wraith?"  
  
"Yeah, but how am I supposed to love if can't touch?"  
  
"Youji," she reprimanded him. "Love is of the heart. If you were continents away from the on you love that love would touch you still. Still, if you are a heart wraith, you can touch those you truly love."  
  
"Yeah? Well, who do I know?"  
  
"Trust your heart."  
  
"How romantic," he said, and lit up his cigarette, expecting no one was going to walk over and take it from him today.  
  
"So," Omi said, "If we got the thing back, could we give it to her, let her give it back to her angel? Would the angel be all healed then?"  
  
"We can't do that." She said, "because the akron has been used for many ugly things in the least three centuries. If Akron the angel tried to put it back within himself, he might turn full demon."  
  
"But it's possible he could be healed."  
  
Manx shrugged.  
  
"It's possible you wouldn't die if you touch me, Omi. You want to come find out first hand?" Youji drew a long drag on his cigarette and slowly let it out, "Some things are just not worth the risk." 


	5. You can call me Judas

Twilight Youji 5/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Weiss Kreuz and I'm only writing this because it's fun. Maybe I'll make the story over original some day, add a lemon or something  
  
Warnings: Religious references which may be offensive to some, references to terrorism and biological weapons  
  
Notes: This is not a death fic, but don't let that ruin anything for you.  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
Demon. Not demon. The distinction was a little lost on Youji. It had been lost since Asuke's death. They had forty-five minutes to kill six people lurking in Tokyo's subway system. Youji thought he'd fucking better be a little demon to pull this off. "I think that I want to go alone," he said. "They are likely to expect an attack at the headquarters. At least they'll be better armed there. And if you take it, you can give me information on where to find their agents, can join me to take them out."  
  
Manx shook her head. "I don't know if you should participate in this mission at all. We don't know all the effects of the curse."  
  
That same black lightening flashed over Youji's eyes. The room felt suddenly chill to Aya.  
  
"We need Youji-kun," Omi said, looking over printed reports that Manx had given him. "There are three main exit points to this house. Front door, back door, and a porch that leads the roof and an escape route to surrounding buildings. I will take the roof, take down anyone fleeing. Ken can enter though the rear, manually disrupt the power breakers. Aya coming through the front making as much noise as possible. They'll gravitate towards the front, and I'll be in through their network." He tapped the report. "They have a wireless connection to the internet, but it's covered by a local scrambler. I'll be close enough on the roof to tap behind the scrambler. Within fifteen minutes of initial attack, we should have probable locations for their agents. Youji-kun can already be in place on the subway, and we can start taking out agents."  
  
"It will work just as well without Youji." Manx said. "The information we have on this curse.."  
  
Youji snapped around to face her, interrupting, eyes narrow. Aya thought the very ends of his hair looked nearly transparent now, ghostly. "The information I have on this curse says that I'm hungry. I'm going into the subway by myself. Put the photos of the suspected agents back up again."  
  
"Don't you understand? You don't have to wire someone to kill them now. All you have to do is touch them." Manx said, trying to drive her point home. "If you go on the trains, you may touch people you don't mean to!"  
  
Aya was sure that Youji's curls were getting glittery transparent.  
  
"Since when is that something new?" Youji ground out, "I'm still a member of Weiss. You have forty-five minutes until the biggest attack Japan has seen since Hiroshima. Do you really care if they die from my noose or my touch, as long as they don't take out Tokyo?"  
  
Ken nodded. "Killing's killing. We'll argue about how after we get these guys."  
  
"What happens to Youji if he uses this curse?" Aya asked.  
  
"He'll be come more demon-ish. It will be harder to lift the curse, I think," Manx said, shutting off the projector. "But Ken is right. Let's deal with these monsters, then we'll deal with getting the curse lifted from Youji."  
  
Omi had drawn his knees up to his chin. "How are you going to do that? If we destroy the Akron, what will happen to Youji then?"  
  
"The curse will be no more," Manx said, but her tone was shifty, her guilt revealing that she had something to feel guilty for.  
  
Youji put it more clearly. "Destroy it and I'll die. Isn't that what you're being too polite about, Manx?"  
  
She met his eyes. In their way, they were all monsters. "Death is not the worst thing that can happen to you."  
  
"Yeah," Youji agreed, pulling the cigarette down from behind his ear again, "but it doesn't save you from everything either. I got the subway. Get me information soon."  
  
Aya watched him walk up the stairs and disappear. Youji couldn't become a demon. That woman, the one that had come looking for the akron said that he smelled angelic. Aya couldn't really see Youji as an angel either. Maybe it was all how one looked at it. "Let's go."  
  
***  
  
Youji found a pair of gloves, long ones that he'd worn to a club once. Insanely expensive soft leather, dark blue like a twilight sky, these were gloves he'd only worn once. Now he tucked the leather in between his fingers like they were a second skin, and zipped them up. Twilight blue for a twilight Youji, he thought, just hovering there between night and day, angelic and demonic.  
  
It took only moments to dress. Going on the subway, he wore blue jeans, a dark blue oxford shirt, his gloves and a pair of running shoes. He didn't see any of the others on his way out, but when he picked up a mobile phone from the green house, he saw all the blood, his ruined shirt. That hardly seemed like it could be just that morning. It was a lifetime away and he could almost imagine his own corpse lying there on the floor, as if he'd gotten up a different creature all together.  
  
A hungry creature, he thought, slipping out the back. There are hungers that make you smile, just because you know you're going to give into them. For the very first time, he knew someone was going to die because of him and he felt no regret at all, only that smile of a happy hunger.  
  
The drive to the subway slipped by so quickly and left about thirty minutes until Manx had said the toxins were due to be released. It was a Saturday morning too. He hadn't thought of this until he boarded a train headed into the heart of the city. It was filled with his favorite thing, girls just old enough to be interesting. Laughing and giggling, they were like overpopulated pets in the car and the next one up too, sitting in two and threes, listening to music. Several wore tee-shirts with a logo for a music festival with what could have been that day's date. Irritated him that he didn't know what the date was.  
  
Twenty-five minutes to go. It made him sweat. Every one of these girls, so full of life and hope, angst and romance, music and sheer potential, every one of them was at risk if he didn't find the agents with the bio toxin canisters.  
  
"Looking for someone," a sultry female voice said, and he turned to find Marilyn Monroe, the American movie starlet, walking next to him. She wore white silk, endless diamonds, and lips so red it made his blood look drab. "You want one of them? Just touch her. She's yours. Her soul and experience will flow through you. It's sweet."  
  
Youji passed into the next car, searching for a match to the photos of the agents. Marilyn glided through too, without using the door. "You're immortal now, you know? What are any of these flimsy little lives compared to yours? They're selfish and they've had everything you wanted."  
  
"Shut up," Youji snapped. "They don't have anything I want!"  
  
"You don't know yourself very well," Marilyn purred.  
  
The girl on the other side of Marilyn looked up at him, eyes wide. "Youji- san! Are you going to the music festival too?"  
  
He stepped back from her, but she was already flinging herself at him, arms around his neck, lips right on top of his. Hunger flared a supernova compared to the solar flare of normal passion. Time just stopped, held still, frozen in that moment of her lips to his. He skimmed over her whole life, from her favorite pair of teddy bear socks to the crush she had on him. For just a moment, he felt as if he were her, with her hopes and dreams and her shining brown eyes.  
  
"Feed on her," Marilyn purred at his ear. "Swallow her. She is yours, offering herself to you."  
  
Youji put his arm around her back, pulled her close to him, returned her kiss. This was what he'd hungered for. And yet.  
  
It wasn't.  
  
He closed his eyes in this timeless place and searched his needs, his loneliness, the hunger. There wasn't any need to lie to himself here in this place. He wanted this person that he respected, that he had given his soul too, without knowing he had. He wanted a red headed bitch of a man. The girl didn't suit him, and realizing that flicked some switch in his head, disengaged him from her soul. An overwhelming tenderness filled him for her, for how beautiful and precious she was. With one gloved hand he caressed her cheek.  
  
Her collapse came in slow motion, eyes rolling back, head following, knees buckling, as she hung there on his arm. Her friends still had this shocked look on their faces that she'd embraced him. Outside the train's window, not more than half a meter had passed. They were just entering a tunnel.  
  
Youji swung the girl up in his arms and set her back in her seat. There was a dreamy smile on her face, and he brushed her hair back behind her ear. He knew two things. One was that he hadn't killed her and that if there was such a thing as positive energy, she was going to feel like she'd been touched by an angel. The second was that he was going to have one bitch of a hang over from it if he didn't find someone he would 'feed' on. It was like the first time he got drunk on tequila. One just knew it was gonna hurt like a bitch later.  
  
Backing away from her, he resumed searching the train. In the forward car, right next to the driver's cab, Youji found the agent. It was the woman in the group. A sturdy looking Russian looking woman, blond with pale eyes and broad shoulders. The train fell into darkness as it made it's way into the tunnel. She held a small grenade shaped object with a button on both ends. The protective covers were off on both ends. She'd turned to look out into the darkness, so as not to see what her fingers did.  
  
Hunger informed him of what he needed to do and one glove was off already. He reached for her cheek. It was like a dream, where you don't know that what you do is real, but you think it is and just have to live through the dream and see.  
  
"I know you better now," Marilyn said, whispering in his hear. "Don't you know? Angels don't get to have gay sex. Or any sex, no caressing the pretty wings, you know? You want that red headed friend of yours to hold you down, tease you, and pop your cherry, don't you? Well, that can't happen if you go angelic. No sex at all for you then."  
  
Hunger snapped in him like a wild cut power line, snapping and spitting. "That's a lie!"  
  
He didn't know how he knew it was, but it was. The agent's soul soaked into his skin, sank into his being like cold stale coffee. He sucked until her hands went slack and the weapon dropped to the ground. This he caught up and pocketed.  
  
He hadn't stopped being out of sync with time, but she had stopped being everything. Her body lay, head against the cab, face relaxed, eyes open. He heard the other passengers commenting in a distorted drone. Stale coffee or not, he wasn't as hungry and he felt much more powerful. Black lightening flashed over his eyes as he glared at Marilyn. "Okay, so it's true. I want Aya. I want to be his bitch. Do you really think it matters what I want or don't want when all these lives are on the line?"  
  
Marilyn grimaced, her upper lip drawing up in an expression of disgust. "You do have angelic blood! Ewwwww, what a pathetic wraith. Ewwww. You're going to be so lonely. The Lady wouldn't have anything to do with you, you know? You're a wraith. Cursed. We wouldn't have anything to do with you either! Nasty angel wanna be! Eeeewwww."  
  
Youji snickered. "It's got to be worth something to have grossed out the devil, uh? I always thought I was too fucked up for hell to take anyway."  
  
Then on a train going the other direction, passing painfully slowly back into the tunnel that the train he was on was just leaving, Youji saw the next agent. His hunger flared brightly again and he jumped before he even thought about it. Glove still off, he grabbed the man by the back of his neck, and sucked.  
  
The same little double-ended canister dropped from his hands, spinning through the air, spraying a fine mist into the air. This soul didn't even rate being called cold coffee and Youji took just enough of it to drop the man, and be able to jump him, chasing the little canister. A little boy, just old enough to toddle after a ball reached out for the spinning grenade. His mother moving in slower motion reached for him, yelling so slowly that Youji couldn't make out the word. One hand reaching for the toxin spraying grenade, one trying to block the boy, Youji smacked into the floor, hitting chest then chin and actually pushing the kid towards the toxin cloud. He grabbed the boy, with his gloved hand, shoved him sideways into the a surprised old lady, closed his hand around the grenade, trying to close off the toxin spray with a finger on each side, then one with hand on each side. Just like he'd wanted from one train to the other, now he wanted out, with the toxin and out he got.  
  
Dropping out of a train into the ground below the tunnel probably wasn't a very bright choice.  
  
"Welcome to purgatory," a male voice, silky enough to send shivers up Youji's back, "Pretty little wraith."  
  
Youji rolled over, lifted his head off of what felt like cold marble. The man was young-ish, late twenties, shoulder length deep brown hair and the golden completion of an Arab prince. He had dark almond eyes and a smile that was disconcerting in the very least. Youji glared at him.  
  
He only smiled more. "As I said, welcome to Purgatory. I'm your new boss, Kudou-san," the man said in flawless Japanese. "You can call me Judas." 


	6. When falling, dive

Twilight Youji 6a/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimer: I still don't own WK.. and I'm pretty sure the original creators did not turn Youji into a wraith or an angel.. but I think he's sexy with big black wings.  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
Aya saw it. He did. It could replay in his mind, even as he watched the first time. Time was sort of folded in on itself, like the last seconds of a car wreck, when you know you're going to hit, the breaks are on, but the truck in front of you is still coming closer.  
  
He was on the lightrail train, in one of the most crowded cars. There were so many people, laughing, and there was a girl who reminded him of Aya- chan. Of course, half of Tokyo reminded him of Aya-chan. It was a joke between he and Youji, that Youji couldn't date any girl that looked like Aya-chan. They all looked like Aya-chan.  
  
Aya had the attention of his target. The man was large, taller than Youji and built wide and thick like an American body builder. He was the kind of man who, if he got his hands on Aya, he'd bend him in half. Aya remembered thinking that missions were supposed to happen at night, when no one was looking. He didn't know if he could kill a man in front of the dozen Aya- chan clones now watching him.  
  
The man had smirked at him, smirked at him as if they both knew, which they did. Death was on the train today. Death was going claw the lives of these people just on their way here or there, it was going to gouge them today. Aya had a custom modified three shot derringer. One did not bring a katana into a crowded train. None of them had had a better pistol with forty-five minutes to target. Pistols weren't sporting, but then neither were bio- toxins that would kill the whole train and hundreds, thousands more, if they opened the doors.  
  
He, the muscle built man, held up a white grenade, blue spray nozzles on both ends. He smiled. Aya pointed his little pistol. The man laughed.  
  
Time had started folding then. The people beyond the laughing man shimmered and the space ripped as if it were only a movie screen. Aya saw what he saw. He did. Youji strode through that rip in the environment of the train. Kudou Youji could move like no one else Aya had ever known, a blond lion, to lazy to be a graceful panther, too honorable to be a hyena, but golden blond danger in the form of a French-Japanese with green eyes and comfortable blond curls. He wore black leather pants, so tight he might have just come from a club, a dark blue crop top that looked like something he'd paid a hundred dollars for only to have it look like he'd cut it off at home. Bare arms, muscles flexing, and that tattoo of his, he passed right by a group of girls that were frozen in time, laughter hanging silently as he passed. Time seemed to hold Aya differently than everyone else. Even the target stood there, his mouth open as his fingers reached to trigger his deadly toy.  
  
Youji reached for the man. He had no weapon, just his arm, reaching out graceful as if he were going to tag a branch as he walked by. Aya noted the new mark on Youji's forearm. It was a fleur de lis, rainbow colored like no tattoo Aya had ever seen with a shimmering gray infinity symbol tracing a figure eight around the edges of the symbol. The whole thing flared as Youji's fingers touched the man, flared with a red muddy light. Light washed Youji, making his green eyes glow unnaturally, but vivid, beautiful. His hair lifted up, rising with static and caged energy.  
  
The man Aya had been about to shoot fell, dropping to his knees in a slow motion transition from Youji and Aya's time plane to that of the girls who still hadn't blinked.  
  
Then Youji saw him. Their eyes locked. Aya had known Youji for months, so long he couldn't actually measure it now, looking into those green eyes, he felt like he'd known him forever, through lives and lives lived and gone. Youji smiled, that glittering smile Aya had seen once at a club, when killing was far away and Youji had been trying to get Aya to dance. Men didn't dance with men, that's what Aya had said. That had been that. Only now, that smile made his heart beat on a different plane.  
  
Panic quickly followed. Aya remembered holding Youji in his arms, a bleeding, dying Youji. Wraith. Youji was dead. Aya felt tears. Tears were something he'd not had since Aya-chan. Youji blew him a kiss, moving in slow motion, as if he were changing time planes. Aya had no idea what was happening, how to explain what he saw and he'd completely forgotten the part about anyone who touched Youji died.  
  
Youji fell backwards, his hair fanning forward around his face, the world melting around him as he went, as if everything were just water. Reality was just a pool for Youji to swim in. When you're falling, dive. Aya leapt arms out. Youji had the good nature to look surprised before Aya landed on him and they both fell.  
  
It was the cool electric feel to Youji's skin that reminded Aya he had likely just committed suicide. "Your eyes are like emeralds," Aya said, finding poetry perfectly acceptable for the dying. Then he pushed up, his feet against Youji's, lifting himself so he could reach Youji's mouth and he kissed him. Just lips to lips, surprised green being watched by determined, stubborn violet, and then Aya pushed his tongue forward into the cool snapping electric of Youji's mouth. If Youji's touch would steal his soul, he'd give it, because without Youji, he had no soul anyway. 


	7. I love you!

Twilight Youji 6b/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz, the bible, or Purgatory.  
  
Warnings: too many to count, read at your own risk. I do not write death fics.  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
"Hell just doesn't have what I have for seducing you," Judas said with a smile. "Besides, you don't have to argue against something your soul already agreed to."  
  
"I didn't agree to anything," Youji snarled, touching the mark on his arm, a narrow fleur de lis filled with a rainbow of color and with a silver infinity symbol figure-eighting around the out side of it, crossing over just at the most narrow point. "What the hell is this thing?"  
  
"That," Judas said deceptively sweetly, "is the mark of Purgatory and here is your second payment."  
  
Youji glared at the golden earring dangling from those elegantly dark fingers. "You're expecting to buy my soul for an earring? Even I'm not that cheap."  
  
"Look closer," Judas purred.  
  
The reflected light on the gold turned to a smooth surface, then deeper into spirit of the object. He found himself standing in a hospital room, light coming in through spotless glass, caressing across the face of a girl who seemed so familiar. Suddenly ashamed of the assassin's gear he wore, his clothing shifted, to clubbing gear, which wasn't much better, but suited his soul.  
  
She had Aya's face, with two long braids, but Youji didn't realize who's room he was in until he'd crossed to her, laid a hand on her cheek. Then it settled into him, as if he'd known her for months and months, knew the sound of her laughter. He had the oddest sensation, as if he could remember sitting in this room, keeping her company "Aya-chan. What has Aya's sister got to do with this? She's innocent."  
  
"Hardly," Judas said, leaning against the wall, twirling the earring around in light. "But then no one is. Really, she's my kind of people, very twilight. If she weren't, I wouldn't have come into possession of this." Judas threw the earring up, caught it neatly out of the air.  
  
"What is that?" Youji thought he knew, and if he were right, then Judas was right. Purgatory had already bought his soul, his allegiance.  
  
"Her soul, of course, but then you knew that."  
  
"What do you want from me?"  
  
"Many things," he said and there was that smile. It made Youji cringe between his shoulder blades. "Her brother will become a powerful demon, cause me great difficulties. Your job is to keep Fujimiya Ran alive so he cannot become a demon. The next part is something you might even like more. Love him well enough that he stops wanting to become a demon, love his anger away. Here." Judas tossed the golden earring to Youji. "I can remove my mark, if you like. Or you can put her earring on and she'll wake up."  
  
"I'm not a whore," Youji said, rolling the earring between his fingers, disturbed that he could feel the life in it. "You can't buy my affections like I was one."  
  
"I'm not asking you to screw every red headed woman in Tokyo, which I might add, I think you've already done. I'm asking you to love a man that you already love."  
  
"I'm not gay," Youji said, though memories of how he felt when Aya had held him on the green house floor came back now, of feeling desire, tenderness, something that filled him more than any of the other red heads he'd seduced. "I've never wanted any man, other than Aya."  
  
"Oh will you tell yourself the truth? You've never wanted anyone other than Ran. These women you've slept with, the hearts you've broken, they were nothing more to you than pretty commercials between moments with the real thing. Why do you fear love?"  
  
"If I touch him, he'll die now, wouldn't he? I'll steal his soul. Can you lift the wraith curse from me?" Youji asked, as he fastened the earring on Aya's ear, only slightly curious that it fit right over and into the one she wore already. "Can you make me human again?"  
  
"No," Judas said softly, reaching out to take hold of Youji's arm. "You are not a simple wraith, Youji. You are a heart wraith. Aya-chan does not die when you touch her, simply because of the love you feel for her brother. I would suggest gloves and long sleeves around everyone else. Also my mark, as you grow stronger and more accustomed to your new state, will give you more choice in whether you kill or not."  
  
"Goodie." There was always sarcasm.  
  
"Come now, be of good cheer," Judas turned to the wall, with the window and snapped his fingers. It was like they were looking into the train that Aya was on. Aya was just lifting his little pistol. No one around him had noticed yet. "Look closely at the people. See the slight gray to the energy around them? It means they will pass into the afterlife shortly, unless something changes."  
  
"But that's all of them! That's hundreds of people!" And Aya too, Youji said, feeling colder than he had the whole day, even when he thought his own death was near.  
  
"Then you'd better hurry. Take that man's soul before he triggers his nasty toy. As soon as you do, I will send you on to the other train. You will save many lives today. Isn't that why you took employ with Weiss? You'll do so much better work serving Purgatory."  
  
"Ran?" The voice came from the girl in the bed, who's eyes were just starting to blink. Youji looked at her, followed her line of sight. She was watching into the train too. "Ran!"  
  
Youji moved. Hell or Purgatory, Heaven even, he didn't really care, except he cared very much for the red head with the flickering gray light around him. Before he knew it he was standing on the vibrating floor of the train, reaching out to touch this terrorist. Aya saw him, looked right at him, just the way Aya-chan had seen things that a person shouldn't ought to.  
  
To Youji it was so quick. He touched his target, pulled a rush of cold fury from the man who fell forward. It was the easiest kill he'd ever made. Except then, then Aya was lunging towards him. Reality melted behind him, drawing him over backwards. Aya held to him, fingers tangling into his hair. There was so little time, no way to push the man he loved away without touching him. It was the harshest test of love, to touch and if they live, you know you love them. Aya had never known fear, Youji thought as Aya's kiss stole what was left of Youji's fear and doubt. It was like no other kiss, igniting a love and part of his soul that had lain dormant all his life. In this timeless fall, Youji danced a lifetime's worth of love and reunion with Ran. It didn't matter whose mark he wore, he would love Ran no matter where they stood in the universe.  
  
Youji stumbled backwards into the train, his arms around Aya. Happiness was something Youji had not felt in a long time. It felt like his feet didn't touch the ground, as if his heart beat in two bodies at once. Slowly, with a dozen smaller kisses to Aya's lips, eyes, throat, he whispered, "I love you! I love you!" As he said this a great weight of guilt and shame lifted from him. Love was no crime! "I love you!"  
  
"I love you, Youji," Aya returned, voice sweet with possession and cherishing. "Don't you ever die on me again!"  
  
The bullet hit Youji's back first, ripping through flesh that could not die and ripped straight through to mortal flesh that had no defense. Blood, hot, vital, and impossible to put back gushed over Youji's hands, seeped under his glove. Aya's eyes, lips opened in surprise. No pain registered, simply disbelief. Red flowed over the lips Youji had just kissed, even as the hole in his own body healed. With tenderness, a weakening threadiness in his voice, Aya whispered, "Love you, Youji."  
  
A scream struggled to rise in him as he lowered Aya to the train's isle, among the time frozen people. "Aya, your sister woke up today. I woke your sister. She called your name!"  
  
Fujimiya Ran's expression didn't change. Only empty violet eyes stared back at the wraith holding him.  
  
"Aya!" Youji screamed, fingers digging into Aya's limp arms. "Aya!"  
  
"I guess that makes him mine, doesn't it?"  
  
Youji looked up to find a demon with white angel wings and Hell red eyes, a hole smoldering in his chest where a heart ought to be. "I am Akron. I was the collector of souls. It is still my right to collect the dead. My love gave you 48 hours. 45 remain. I will resurrect him as a demon if you do not and he will kill you with his bare hands for the slightest release from his pain. Bring me my heart and you may have him back, alive and mortal."  
  
Youji clung to Aya's body as the winged ex-angel pulled him away. With his bare hand he touched Aya's still warm body, face, throat, belly, hand, trying to steal the soul still trapped within, to rescue Aya from Akron. "I told you! He is mine!" Akron spat as he swung Aya into his arms. "His rage destines him to be demonic! You thought you could love him free of that?"  
  
On his hands and knees, black ink wraith tears writing hysterical despair down his face, he begged, "You were an angel! Please don't take him from me! Please!"  
  
"Do you really think heaven cares about passion? About love that someone puts before their service to the throne of GOD? You're nothing but a pathetic sinner who would sell everything for the pleasure of your heart. Bring me my heart or I swear he'll be the most tortured demon in all the hells!" Akron turned, carried Aya's body through a hole in reality.  
  
Youji scrambled after, clawing, gouging with in human hands at the metal of the train door in his rage! Aya was gone! He knew this as true as he knew anything.  
  
In his rage, he spun on the shooter. It was a man, gun in one hand, grenade in the other. Whatever humanity remained in Youji none of it touched him in that timeless plane as he ripped the man who'd shot Aya into nothing more than stains and bone slivers. 


	8. We're not paying for it, you know!

Twilight Youji  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: This story is written for fun. and one can soooo tell. I don't own Gravitation, Gundam Wing, or Weiss Kreuz  
  
Notes: Insane chapter.. rewritten many times. probably still way in need.  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
Youji hadn't picked pockets in years, except for mission goals. By he time he left the train station, he'd gotten himself a mobile phone, half a pack of cigarettes of the wrong brand, and a Zippo lighter. It was a bit more of a challenge to get people's stuff without touching them. According to the mobile phone, it was a little after nine, so about five hours since he'd been stabbed with the stolen angel heart, a couple more since he'd gone on this second mission. In between he'd meet Judas, woken Fujimiya Aya from her coma, and shared the most important kiss of his whole life. It was not nearly enough time to come to any kind of understanding.  
  
In his sleeveless clubbing shirt, black booted ankles crossed as he sat on a wall a couple blocks from the station, his fingers caressed the dial pad of the phone he'd stolen. The most logical explanation for all of this was that he'd gone out the night before and gotten stoned off his ass. As a rule, he didn't do drugs. He knew he had enough problems out doing what did without adding any mind-altering substances. He had called one of those red headed women Aya once and she had bruised his cheek with a fisted slap. Fuck only knew what he would have done if he'd been stoned at the time. He sure as hell hoped it was, and then he reversed himself, wished it wasn't Aya who'd died in his arms and been kidnapped by a seven foot tall black winged angel who got along too well with Hell.  
  
It was just one of those things a person really didn't want to be real. Holding a cigarette between shaky lips, he worked on lighting it as he dialed Omi's number.  
  
He shoved the lighter into his pocket, took the cigarette between two fingers as Omi's voice answered, "Moshi Moshi! Kitty in the House Flowers! How can I help you?  
  
"Cut the crap. It's me," he said, blowing smoke down over his chin. "Omi, you know what hospital Aya's sister's at?"  
  
There was a pause. "Youji-kun, who is Shindou Shuichi? Isn't he that singer?"  
  
"I stole his phone and I wouldn't know. I don't listen to your music. He was just some kid. I didn't touch him. Aya's sister is important. I have to know if she woke up today." Youji pulled another drag of his stolen cigarette and absently noted that the sun didn't feel warm on his skin. "Stay on the phone with me, okay?"  
  
"Where are you, Youji-kun? Have you seen Aya-kun? Ken just took a message from a hospital about his sister. How did you know? Is he with you?"  
  
Youji pushed the smoke out his nose, then threw the cigarette down to the side walk. "Long story. You got an address on those head fucking Schwartz?"  
  
"I have the location they phoned from last, but I doubt they are there still. Youji-kun, I have your location, Ken's coming to get you. Aya's not answering his mobile phone."  
  
"No, I guess he wouldn't do," Youji said, wording like a British TV show he'd seen, as if some distance to the facts would make them easier. "Well, you see, first he kissed me, then we got shot, and then some psychotic angel dragged him to hell. It's been a shit of a morning."  
  
"Youji-kun," Omi said, just a little whine showing in his voice, "Are you okay?"  
  
"Omi-kun," Youji soothed, smiling even as he took out another cigarette, "I'm cursed, literally, so I guess at least it's not all in my head. Did you have even the slightest clue that I was in love with Aya?"  
  
"Uh," Omi's inability to answer filled the air, "You're in love with Aya's sister?"  
  
"Naw." Now the accent was a little American, a lot distant from his problems. "With that red headed sword wielding bastard we live with. You ever watch him sleep? Makes me wonder who he'd be if he'd never gotten hurt by, yeah. So you ever watch him sleep?"  
  
"No!"  
  
Youji could hear the blush real clear through their digital connection. Nice phone. "I have an incoming call. Omi, get me their last known location. You and Kenken can meet me there, alright?" he didn't wait for an answer, just flipped over to the incoming call. "Moshi moshi?"  
  
"Who are you?" asked the powerful male voice, icy cold.  
  
"Good question. What do you know about wraiths," Youji asked, blowing another puff of strong French smoke out between his lips.  
  
"Where is Shindou?"  
  
"At the train station, I suppose, probably looking for the phone I stole from him." Youji leaned back and parted his hair with his thumb nail, trailing slightly fragrant cigarette smoke over his head. "Hey, he stole your coat didn't he? These are your cigarettes. These are pretty good. Where do you get them?"  
  
"Which train station," the voice asked and Youji sat up, sighed. Under all the anger, that was all that really mattered to this man, his worry for the pink haired teenager Youji had robbed. "Is he safe? Did you hurt him?"  
  
"No, he's safe. I was just leaving the train station, picked his pocket. He looked like he'd been crying. Did you hurt him?"  
  
Defensive now, honest the way a person can only be with an absolute stranger. "He's too young and stupid. He thinks he's in love. I'm just the wrong kind of person for him."  
  
"You asshole," Youji snarled and took another puff of Eiri's French cigarette. "What kind of person? This whole damn universe is filled with hate and pain, with nasty shit and people, if someone loves you, and you love them back, and you do, or you wouldn't be calling him up right after you saw the news of the terrorist attacks, and that's what you did, isn't it? If I have to go to hell to get the one I love, I will, so don't you be a stupid fuck and throw away the one you love."  
  
There was a sputter. "No one talks to me that way!"  
  
"You can come try to kick my ass if you can find me, but seriously, why don't you just come down to the train station and tell him you're sorry for being an ass, take him home and do what ever gay boys do with each other?"  
  
"Do you have any idea who I am?" Yuki Eiri snarled, but he was already getting his feet into his shoes to go after Shuichi.  
  
"No," Youji said, smiling now, "But I suppose it doesn't matter. Wraith, demon, angel, fag, a heart's a heart, we love where we love, uh?"  
  
"You're not paying me to be your therapist."  
  
"Free's the best kind," Youji got up, started walking, looking for a car or motorcycle worth stealing. "So if someone had taken, say Shuichi, and they wanted this really dangerous weapon in exchange for him? Would you give it over? I mean, if it had belonged to the kidnapper in the first place, but now it was going to make things worse if they got it?"  
  
"Are you talking about the terrorists that tried to attack the trains this morning?"  
  
"Nope," Youji leaned over casually, looking into a nice little mini. "Just say, demonic bad? The kind of shit that makes a person think they've lost the whole bag and all the marbles?"  
  
"You did have something to do with the terrorists?"  
  
"I killed three of them," Youji admitted, giggling the mini's door handle just right then jerking hard. "Okay, two. I think one of them just passed out. It's what I do. I'm a killer."  
  
"Then why do you care what bad things the kidnapper does? Just get your lover back."  
  
"Its not that simple," Youji hedged, holding the phone between shoulder and cheek. "Its more like that story where the guy has to choose between saving his kid and a train full of people."  
  
"But if you're a killer," there was a pause, "I'm watching the news now, there is footage of a train in the station you mentioned. Did you do that?" The tone mixed awe and utter disgust, "Is that puree of terrorist?"  
  
The car Youji was hotwiring came to life. "Yeah, I guess it is. I'm a little more of a monster than I was yesterday."  
  
"Shuichi is alive because you were there. Listen, if you can do that, in front of everyone, so that they're saying they just saw him explode. Then you might be more of a monster, but you're more able to do things that someone else might not be able to. Don't think, train or kid? Think how to time things so it's not a problem in the first place. If you're killing terrorists in the middle of groups of people and not hurting anyone else, you're not a killer, you're a protector. Don't see things so black and white, expand a little."  
  
"It's the hardest time of day to see in, you know? Twilight," Youji pulled out into the street. "The eyes don't adjust well. I've got to go kill some bad guys, a demon or two. Thanks for the chat."  
  
"You're welcome. Drop that phone in a mail box. I do love him."  
  
"I can hear it in your voice." Youji said, ignoring the next incoming call for another few beeps.. "Would you kill for him? Die for him?"  
  
"Yes. Love is in your voice too."  
  
Youji didn't know what to say to that, so he hit the receive button and said, with fake cheerfulness, "Moshi moshi!"  
  
"Balinese," Crawford's voice chilled the whole of Tokyo. "I want you to kill someone for me."  
  
Youji laughed. This phone brought the most amusing conversations. "You can't kill this person yourself? You seem pretty fucking good at it. Who do you want me to kill, Crawford-san?"  
  
"Akron."  
  
"I met him tonight, nasty bastard. Just how do you expect me to kill him?"  
  
"I want you to give him back his heart," Crawford said an unreadable emotion in his voice.  
  
"This is what you were playing at all along, wasn't it," Youji spat, wishing emotion could reach through the phone the way someone could toss acid. "You used us."  
  
"Are you surprised," Crawford asked. "I have left the object in question in the lilies. You'll probably want to get your fellow kitties some pain killer. They weren't happy to see us." That had a definite smirk to it.  
  
"Did you have any point to this or was this just recreation for you?"  
  
"I guess you'll find out in time," Crawford was just walking out of the Koneko as Youji pulled up in his stolen car. Nagi followed him out, carrying Aya's favorite blue rose. Crawford shut the phone off, and turned in his direction.  
  
"You can't just take that flower!" Youji said, pointing at the potted rose bush. Nagi looked at him through the leaves, dark eyes that looked like a young boy's eyes, not like a trained and vicious killer.  
  
"We're not paying you for it," Schuldig purred, holding out his hand as if he expected Youji to hand over the car keys as well. "Well, come on. The police are probably already looking for it. Do you want them to find it here."  
  
Farfarello was suddenly there as well, leaning against the hood. "The flower made Nagi smile," he said tracing his tongue up a stolen pair of pruning scissors, the ones with the nice blue rubber handles. "The money in the cash register made Schuldig smile. I want to cut your wings off."  
  
"I don't have wings! You robbed our cash register?" Youji smacked the keys into Schuldig's waiting hand. "That flower needs three parts Ruby feed and two parts water, and I've been giving it half of cup of coffee once a week."  
  
"Okay," Nagi said sweetly and Youji was just about sure the boy hugged the damn pot like he'd just gotten a new kitten or something. Aya was going to bust a rod over this. "Thank you."  
  
Youji frowned, eyebrows drawing down. He leaned a little so he could look in Nagi's eyes, through the rose foliage. "Email Omi if you have questions."  
  
Behind the green there was a smile.  
  
"Five minutes until police," Crawford said calmly, holding out his hand for the keys, which Schuildig made a display of irritation before throwing the keys to his leader.  
  
They all disappeared into the car, Schuildig and Farfarello into the back, Nagi and his pet rose in the passenger seat. Brad turned and he and Youji locked eyes. "Why," Youji asked, wondering if he could reach out and touch the Oracle, just that fast. There was only inches between them, where Crawford stood with one foot on the car, arms on the door. It was Crawford's fault that he was a wraith, that his touch would kill now.  
  
"Because, Kudou, someday the Oracle will be loved by Death and you're going to watch over Death's great grandmother, and his grandmother. Even after i disappear from this time, you're going to be there watching over them for me. You'll even do it because you want to."  
  
"Is everything in your life tainted by so much manipulation?"  
  
Crawford smirked, but Farfarello leaned forward, grinned, "I like you a lot! You really piss God off!"  
  
Youji scratched the back of his head like that could make the feeling of squick go away.  
  
As they pulled away, he saw Schuldig smile and had that awful finger nails on the chalk board feeling of his thoughts being riffled through, then so vividly he saw Aya's lips lift in a small smile, still wet with their shared kiss, "I love you."  
  
Schuldig's voice layered over that, smirking, "Manipulation or not, our Oracle's in love with someone who isn't even born yet. Disgusting, ne? And Farfarello pissed in the apple juice in the fridge. Thank you, come again."  
  
Youji pressed a finger to his temple. "Come back and let me touch you, you guilty bastard!"  
  
"You'll be one of us yet, Caramel Kitty. Hurry inside. Pretty Kenken's probably bleeding by now." There was a very twisted humor feeling to Schuldig's last thought projection, decidedly dark humor.  
  
AN: this was just getting. long.. and well, I think I'll post this and continue at work tonight 


	9. With one Broken Wing

Twilight Youji 8/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: Ne. I only own this particular story, not Youji, Ken, Omi, Aya, Aya-chan.. nee you get the idea.  
  
Warnings: If I do a beta on this story.. I have to smooth out the whole Queen of wraiths thing.  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
Insanity, despair, grief, all walked back into the Koneko with Youji. These feelings had followed him for years, using his grandmother's voice or Asuka's voice. As he closed the door, switched the 'Open' sign to 'Closed', he thought he could feel ghosts gathering around him. He swayed, unsteady, dizzy in the moment, surrounded by sea of gray grief; he was just one more lost soul the universe couldn't digest.  
  
The sounds coming from the greenhouse/potting room behind the main store distanced him further from any sense of sanity. So much death and it weighed his failures down on him. That someone else was having what sounded like good sex ought to have made him feel better, but it didn't.  
  
There was one small light. Aya, Aya was his bright shining hope. Youji stood there for a moment, thinking of Aya, angry, defensive, honest Aya forcing life down Youji's throat. It made Youji smile as he moved water lilies to look down into the goldfish pond he'd built by the north side of the shop, he tried to think back, to find when Aya had become his light. It was months before, building slowly through the days.  
  
Aya noticed him. He dropped to his knees and searched. Crawford said it was in the lilies. Wet to his elbows, one goldfish ran into his arm, biting at him with painless lips as if he were something edible, only to float to the top. "Sorry," Youji whispered, finding the goldfish's soul uncomfortably odd. Then his fingers found it, round and smooth, cold stone egg, some kind of dinosaur egg object that he pulled up out of the water. This hope in him had started because Aya had noticed him, had yelled him when he didn't eat. There was the time that Aya had taped his broken ribs for him and holding that white marble egg up, he decided it was that moment, with Aya's fingers touching his bare skin that he'd come around some kind of fork in his life. Aya made him want to be alive. Or at least he head, before this. The lilies that he'd touched were wilting now, shriveling up like death himself had stirred through them. Now Youji just wanted to see Aya alive, safe, see him know that his sister was awake, and then, Youji thought with a sense of peace, then he wanted to die.  
  
"Give it to me," she said, a voice melodic and rich, a singer's voice. "Give me his heart and I will lift the curse I laid on you."  
  
Youji rose, clutching the price of Aya's life to his chest. Holding it to him, whatever angelic blood he had hummed in harmony with the thing contained with the marble. He backed away from her, both arms wrapped around it. "I think I'll take it to Akron myself, you see, he's got something I want."  
  
"Funny little man," she said, not amused at all, and floating towards him without her feet touching the ground. "You're a nasty little angel bastard, aren't you? Was it your mother, or your father?"  
  
Years of unprocessed grief battered at Youji's emotional wall. So very vivid, he could see his noble Japanese Grandmother, his mother's mother, telling him that his mother would never come back, that the plane taking her to Paris had fallen out of the sky. The Japanese were not meant to marry the French. His eyes on the spectral woman following him, as her jeans left her body like smoke drifting away, leaving her in a Roman toga, her hair up and spun around her head, opals hanging from her ears. She was his image of a Greek goddess, but he knew, she was no goddess. He backed up the stairs that lead to their private living areas. The family resemblance jumped out in stark relief to him as she laid a hand on the railing and followed him up. "The girl, that one that hid behind me, she's your descendent."  
  
"From my sister's line, actually," the woman said, floating up the stairs. "You have to give it to me, and those bad bad men have done so much damage to it. Can't you feel it? It's almost ruined."  
  
Schwartz never seemed cleaner to Youji. The thing in his arms seemed t glow, to hum out loud now. "You. You're the one that set those stupid people to doing that ritual. You were going to get your own descendent killed."  
  
"Hardly. Angels are always so stupid, so slow to see what really is." She followed him down the hall, pure white cloth flowing around her, shifted by the very faint breeze of her passing. "Come now, I'll give you another gift. You want to be free of all those painful memories, don't you? No more teary nights waiting for your mommy, no more memories bringing back your Grandmother's disapproval of you, you French Bastard, disgrace," her voice stole the perfect copy of his Grandmother's tone and voice, the dripping disgust that could barely stand to speak of him, "Why can't you be more like your Uncle? At least try to be Japanese! Dye your hair a decent color before you go out, so everyone doesn't know at first look. You're a shame on this family. All the French are faggots. It's amazing they have children at all."  
  
Tears, from years of emotional bruising, chilled blackly down Youji's face, and the stolen angel heart in his arms was all that kept the sorrow from swallowing him. "My mother loved me very much."  
  
"Yes, but she's dead," the woman said, this time in Asuka's voice, "Let's get married Youji! I want to have your baby!"  
  
Youji turned and ran. Those words came right from his mind, from his nightmares. He loved Asuka, but like his grandmother had accused him, he was a faggot. None knew. None had called him on it, not until Judas, and then it was too late, he already loved Aya. Youji ran into his room, only to come to a hard stop. The room was filled with the ghosts of those he'd killed, throats deformed, eyes bulging, He screamed, and her words formed ice crystals over his cheek. "I brought some friends, Youji. Give me my husband's heart, and I'll go away. I'll take them all with me, all your memories, no more pain, no more death, Youji-kun, just give me what's mine."  
  
He spun away from her. "It's not yours! Or you could take it from me! You! You're the one that cut it out of him, that stole it from him in the first place!"  
  
"He had no right to leave me!" Fury made a blizzard of her words and the ghosts closed on him.  
  
He wished with all his might that the floor would give away, like it had on the trains. He'd take hell over this any day. "Leave me alone!"  
  
"Oh," she purred, arms lying over her head, ghosts around her like dark clouds on the horizon, roiling, folding, thriving on her hate and lust. "I can't go away until you give me the heart. What do you care for him anyway? Didn't he carry away the one you love? He'll do as he said, and make a demon of your Ran, make Ran into a screaming rabid demon. You'll die under Ran's fury like you killed the man on the train. Akron is doing that right now." She brought her fingers down to her cheek, looking like a little girl playing a game, "If you listen, you can probably hear him screaming in agony right now. And you want to help the monster who did this to your lover? Akron is torturing the only person who loves you and you're going to help HIM?"  
  
Youji dropped to his knees, leaving space for ghosts to spill in over-the- top of him around him, filling up the very air he needed still to breathe. "You're lying! I will trade this for Aya's life and if Aya kills me and it makes him even a little happy that's good! I will never give this to you! It's not yours!" He curled in a ball around it, some shielding warmth wrapping around him, shielding out the ghosts, the fears.  
  
From within the cocoon of angelic light, he couldn't see his own black wings, huge and vibrantly alive, black as a raven, but glittering with sparkles of twilight. The egg he held in his arms warmed him, spilled light between his arms, cast shadows of his curls, made haloed outlines of his wings, his feet.  
  
The queen of wraiths screamed and dove at him, tearing at the wings he'd inherited from a father he never knew. Feathers and blood sprayed like acid over ghosts that went lacy and disappeared when faced with flying angel blood. "Give it to me! I will rip apart myself!"  
  
Youji wailed as she shredded skin, feathers, bone, but to defend himself, he'd have to release the egg that he protected. He had only one person to call to for help, one person who was already dead. "Aya!"  
  
"Stop!" The voice came from the direction of his door, was a voice he'd heard only once before, calling out Aya's real name. "Demon! Get away from Youji-kun!"  
  
The kindness in her words, so tender and affectionate soothed the screaming pain in his back and soul. Aya-chan knew his name.  
  
A reek of brimstone, of heat and unseasoned barbecue wafted into the room, riding a wave of heat as if the air had turned to fire. Youji sat up, one wing hanging, lying against his shoulder. Ran Fujimiya ascended up through the floor of Youji's room, hair like living flame dancing around his chest and down his back. A katana in one hand, a shorter length of black and dripping chain in one hand, the end of it still manacled to his wrist, he stepped out onto the floor of Youji's room like an angel of flame more than a demon. Skin pale, eyes filled with violet fury, he growled and the ghosts rained like ashes, all complaints laid to rest.  
  
"Ran!" Aya-chan called, running into the room, her arms open, only to stop short when those violet eyes. "Ran."  
  
He blinked, chain rattling as he shifted his position. Youji rose to his feet, shaking and unsteady. "Aya-chan," he said, softly, calmly. "He's not himself today, bad morning. Come here, please."  
  
She turned to look at him, tears filling her eyes. "He doesn't know me."  
  
Akron's wife laughed, her fingers like claws and dripping Youji's blood. "You're going to die, defending her because you love him. Then I will have what I want! Do you understand now why your Grandmother said you were a failure?"  
  
"Aya-chan, come here, we just have to give him a chance." Youji encouraged, hoping he could get her to the window, push her out. There was another of his goldfish ponds below; she would stand a better chance of escape. As she got behind him, her hands and body touching his battered wings, he winced, clutching Akron's heart tighter, as if that would help. Addressing the newborn fire demon, he said, "Aya, you remember me? Youji? Lazy assed bastard, always telling me not to smoke in the shop? That's right, no smoking in the shop. You always said I'd get ash somewhere, start a fire."  
  
"Fire," the creature that had Aya's face purred. It was Aya's voice though, the same voice that had told Youji he loved him. Aya stepped towards him, flame now dancing along the sharp edge of his katana, leaving burning footprints where he'd been standing. "Burning Youji."  
  
"Uh, yeah, well, that's one choice," Youji agreed, stepping backwards towards the window, pushing the slender and fragile girl behind him. "Do you really think that'll make you feel better?"  
  
Flame jumped down the links in the chain, swirling, flowing like red and yellow water.  
  
"No!" Aya-chan yelled, pushing against Youji's broken wing so she could get back around him. "Ran! You don't want to do this. Youji-kun saved me! He helped me find my way back to my body!"  
  
"Hurry up and kill him! We can return to your master and complete the ritual!"  
  
Ran turned to look at her, a cascade of fire spilling over his shoulder. "I have no master."  
  
The fear only showed in her eyes. "Kill the angel," she snapped. "Tear into those wings. Smell the reek of angel blood."  
  
Ran turned back towards Youji and his sister. "Youji is an angel. Let the girl go, if you kneel angel."  
  
"And Omi and Ken," Youji bargained, "Don't burn the Koneko or hurt them and you can do anything you want with me."  
  
The fire demon nodded. "Angel hurt me, now I'll have vengeance."  
  
"You were always big on that vengeance kick, Aya," Youji agreed. "After what Taketori did to your family. Aya-chan's awake now. She was your sister."  
  
"Oh for the grace of Claudius! Will you shut up!" She grabbed his shattered wing and jerked hard.  
  
Youji's scream rippled like a violet light over Ran's fire, shifting something in his eyes. "I have waited lifetimes to have Akron back, for his love to come back to me! Who do you think you are?" She stabbed one finger into the broken flesh of his wing, flooding wraith energy into a body turning angelic. He rolled tightly into a ball, around the stolen heart he needed to buy Ran's freedom with. His cry shook the Koneko, shattering widows and the illusion that Schuldig had locked Ken and Omi into. Twenty miles away Schuldig collapsed against Crawford, cursing in every language he knew as he tried to block Youji's overflowing agony.  
  
Aya-chan picked up a lamp from Youji's bedside table and threw it. "Stop! You're hurting him! Ran! Remember!"  
  
"Demon's don't remember loving, stupid girl!" Youji's wings shriveled as his screaming died.  
  
"Die!" Ran shouted, flaming katana slashing down towards the Queen of Wraiths, who dodged back, letting Youji sag as if he could go right through the floor. Ran lunged, skewering the woman on his flaming sword more like an avenging angel than a demon. She howled, enraged and utterly surprised. She lashed at him with gray ice energy and the fire of his being flashed around her, surrounding and consuming her. She went up like a Roman candle, but the flames simply roiled over Youji's room, around his door.  
  
Ken and Omi were there now, Ken's arm around Omi's shoulder, Omi's arm up before his eyes, blocking some of the heat that wasn't really burning anything, but the woman who'd made Youji a wraith. "Aya!" Omi yelled, realizing who was in the center of the flames as the woman rained down, just white ash now. "Aya! Youji!"  
  
Angel Youji, wraith Youji, had rolled over, the price of Aya's freedom held to his chest, as he inched his way back from the flames. Cheeks sunk in, eyes looking large and vividly emotional green, he inched back, the broken wing dragging. He left a lacy trail of blood, the last of his sanity burning up with Aya's flaming hair and rage.  
  
Aya-chan dropped to her knees, crawling towards him. "Youji-kun," she called, knowing that look in his eyes, trying to call him back towards life, away from the fear and horror. "Youji-kun, trust me, please come to me."  
  
Then she reached out to him, slender little fingers, braids falling over her shoulders as she reached for him. "Give me your hand, Youji-kun, trust me."  
  
"Don't touch me!" he screamed. "Don't touch me!" The scream broke down to tears, sobbing.  
  
Demon Aya turned, sword and chain lower to his side, some humanity returning to those violet eyes. Slowly glowing ember lips created his name, "Youji. Yo ji."  
  
"Aya," Youji said, his breathing slowing, as he collapsed back, eyes locked with Aya's. "Still love you, always will, forgive me?"  
  
Fire flared as Aya tilted his head, violet eyes narrowed. It was a difficult concept to work into all the rage. "Love. Love Youji."  
  
"See?" Aya-chan said, sniffing back tears, "It'll be okay! Youji-kun!" And she reached for him, to take his hand in hers and absolute terror blackened his eyes, pupils going wide as a moonless midnight.  
  
"Don't! I don't want to kill you," he whispered. "Don't touch me!"  
  
The gate to Hell that Aya had come up through opened then, just so Youji sat there a moment, fire flashing up behind his one erect black wing. Black wraith tears inking down his face.  
  
Aya demon stepped closer, confusion flickering blue through his flames. "Angel. My angel."  
  
"Yours," Youji whispered. "I have the price of your life, Aya. I'll pay."  
  
Aya-chan screamed, reached for him, but Ken caught her shirt, holding her back, as Youji slipped backwards into the flames of Hell.  
  
The floor closed. Flames died back and Aya, Ran Fujimiya blinked. The sword clattered to the floor, and one red headed saved man dropped. Completely human, unmarked, he lay naked and perfect, breathing the gentle breathing of a sleeping man on Youji's hard wood floor. Aya-chan threw herself over Aya's sleeping body, and Ken didn't stop her. The room felt sane again, normal. There were four people, just normal people. Omi crossed to Ken, who wrapped him in his arms. None of them had any doubt. Youji had bought Aya free of Hell. 


	10. We've started a little rebellion

Twilight Youji 9/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Disclaimers: I do not own Gravitation or Weiss Kreuz. Religious references sorta are a mix of mythology and my own weird take on it.  
  
Warning: As I approach the close of this episode of this story, I realize that there is a lot more that I'd like to tell with it. I also realize that I don't know how Youji is going to get okay yet.  
  
Note: I'm looking for a rp partner. If you have a character who'd be interested in knowing my Youji character, please email me. Duo and Shuichi, and Seifer wouldn't mind a playmate either. Squallsknight@yahoo.com  
  
Twilight Youji  
  
They sat at a cafe table. There was sunlight and coffee. Aya didn't think it was warm though. He'd been cold, cold deep into his bones since that day, two weeks gone, that he'd told Youji he loved him and later watched Balinese fall into Hell. Across the little cafe table sat two blonds, one, a writer he'd read every book by, one Yuki Eiri. It was sheer fate that Kudou would steal Yuki-san's cigarettes and lighter, his lover's cell phone.  
  
"Yes, I really want to know. I'll owe you a favor for the answer, as I have already agreed." The answer was directed to the other blond, Yuki-san's friend Seguchi Tohma, who, it seemed, was on very good terms with Hell.  
  
The smaller blond stirred his coffee, tapped the small spoon lightly against the china bisque cup, resettled the spoon on a pristine white napkin. In those blue eyes, Aya thought he could see the warmth of Hell burning, so subtle under the polite surface. "There will not be a favor required, Fujimiya-san. The debt was paid for you already by another," Tohma lifted his cup, avoiding Eiri's questioning look. "The one you seek is not within the boundaries of Hell. I took the liberty of inquiring with my sources and he is not within the boundaries of Heaven either."  
  
The sound of Ken's teeth grinding, then the metal of his chair grating as he scooted forward filled up the seconds as Tohma's information soaked in. "But we know, from," he hissed, "Our sources that he's not on Earth, not among mortals."  
  
Tohma sipped his coffee, watched Eiri blow thick French cigarette smoke. "Not all things are truly controllable. The heart, a willingness of a soul to pay a debt complete, even though it pours itself out into nothingness. It has happened before, that the price a soul paid was too high and the soul simply ceased to be."  
  
Aya thought Tokyo would never be warm again. "I had always thought death was absolute, that nothing came after."  
  
Ken ran a hand through his hair, shoved his chair back and walked away, broke into a run. The day Youji had fallen into Hell had affected them all. All of them had been there, seen him go, seen the effect on Aya. They hadn't taken a mission since then. Kritiker had as good as fired them all. Life was just too precious, uncontrollable.  
  
Aya, Ran, he corrected himself. He didn't need his sister's name anymore. He would go to whatever plane he needed to go to if he could find Youji there.  
  
Quite out of nowhere, a man spun the little cafe chair that Ken had been sitting on around, and straddled it. Aya was sure that Tohma's hair stood straight up in places, making little horns above his ears, blond debatable little horns, but Eiri just sat there sipping coffee. The man, an Arab looking man in a nice suit, laid a business card down on the table before Aya. "Iscariot, Judas. I understand you're looking for employment."  
  
"He needs nothing to do with you," Tohma snarled, leaning forward and Ran was completely certain there were flames in those blue eyes. "Be gone, apostate, betrayer."  
  
"Tsk," Judas said, not bothering to look really offended. "Some tea parties just need tipped on their sides. Here," he said handing Ran a photo, just a cheap Polaroid, the kind that develops itself.  
  
Ran sat up straighter, turned the photo to over, looking for any kind of forgery, trying to convince himself that it was real. "Where is he?"  
  
Judas picked up his business card, tapped the corner of it against the photo. "To everything there is a price. It took considerable energy and effort to bring our black winged angel back from oblivion. If you were my employee, I'd let you wake him up."  
  
Holding both the photo and the business card, crushing them almost, Ran agreed. "I am your employee."  
  
The burn that hit his arm was instantaneous, zipped from the inside of his elbow to his wrist before he could shove his shirt sleeve back and look. It was the same mark he'd seen on Youji's arm, the rainbow fleur de lis with the silver shimmering infinity symbol. "I want to see him. I want to go now."  
  
Judas smiled, the sunlight making his hair seem to glint blue and Aya remembered the cold electric taste to Youji's kiss.  
  
"You're a fool," Tohma said, but Ran wasn't sure if the blond mean him or if he mean Judas.  
  
Smirking Judas bowed to the agent of Hell. "Only fools and romantics ever engage in real rebellion for the sake of freedom and love, is that not so, Eiri-san?"  
  
Eiri flicked ash over the railing and onto the sidewalk. "That's the way it is in my books. The real world is more dangerous."  
  
"You're all courting real death, oblivion," Tohma's voice was frosty, hellishly certain of what he knew, "Fujimiya-san, if the one you seek wears that mark, he is more lost than oblivion. Both Hell and Heaven stand against him. Give me your hand, align with us, and I can remove the mark from you before it is too late. You should chose a side that might win before the war starts in earnest."  
  
"I am grateful, Seguchi-san," Ran said, sliding the photo of Youji and the business card into his jacket pocket, "But I'm afraid I my choice and allegiance have already been given."  
  
"Think of your sister!" Tohma scrunched up the napkin in his fist ,making even Eiri's eyebrows rise.  
  
Ran bowed slightly, an offering of respect. "I think my sister leans more towards Heaven than to the honorable house you serve."  
  
As Ran walked away, he watched Tohma watch him in the mirrored window of the cafe and he was sure the smoke haloing Tohma had to be from Eiri's cigarette.  
  
"He wouldn't be able to save you a second time," Tohma taunted.  
  
Judas waved to a taxi, as he mouthed, "This time, I'll save him." To Ran he said, "You must love him a deeply. Most former demons align with Hell automatically."  
  
Ran's response was a slightly lifted eyebrow as he slipped into the taxi.  
  
"Hell will not be happy with you," Judas said, pulling out what looked very much like a palmtop computer from his jacket pocket.  
  
"What makes you think they were happy with me before," Ran replied as the tip of one red eartail burst in flame.  
  
Judas' mouth dropped open, hesitated. "You're still a demon! Can you fully transform?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Are you," Judas sought for a delight way to ask, "Are you still sane in your demon form?"  
  
"Perhaps," Ran shrugged. "I burned Youji's Grandmother's house, which she then blamed on Youji."  
  
"This is wonderful! I have a twilight angel and a twilight demon who are in love with each other," Judas said, smiling contentedly. "Blink, Fujimiya- san."  
  
Ran didn't mean to, but he did. Blinking was so natural, except this one took an eternity. It was an eternity in which he didn't breath, like the longest kiss when he'd fallen from one train into the other with Youji. He forced breath into his mouth, down into his chest, forced time to answer to him and felt the taxi dissolve, felt an arm around him, pulling him into a run. It was all one blink, and when breath did hit him, it came with a rush. His eyes snapped open and they were in a forest.  
  
Wide trees that grew no where in Japan, trees so tall and tree, dripping with rain, ancient trees that stood around them like a cathedral. Ran stumbled and only Judas' grip on him held him upright. "Where?"  
  
"We are no where," Judas explained, "A place in between, where people have not lived before. Come."  
  
Ran followed now, down a mossy path in the green shadow of the giant redwood rain forest. It felt as if he were walking in a cathedral that none had ever left foot prints in before. "Youji?"  
  
Judas motioned and stepped aside. "He paid Akron the price of your life, and Akron freed you from what he had laid upon, restoring your human life."  
  
Laying on a mossy hill, wide and high as bed, wet with the rain that had just fallen lay an angel with blacks wings and golden hair. Covered only in green silk, a wet silk that clung to a lean muscular body, he slept, his wings to those two who watched him. The moss cradling him moved, breathed with his slight movements, giving freedom to wings that might find no comfort in an ordinary bed. The wings were the darkest black in the forest, the midnight sky that the canopy of green would never admit to the forest floor.  
  
"And Youji? What happened to him?" Aya had the feeling that he should remove his shoes as he stepped into the clearing, walking slowly around the mossy dais, until Youji's sleeping face came into view. The wings made him look larger, as his clothes did for most of the time Ran had known him. Seeing him sleeping, vulnerable, protected only by a thin silk sheet, Ran understood how fragile, delicate, Youji could be without the projection of his personality. "Has he slept all this time?"  
  
"It hasn't been an easy sleep," Judas said, voice betraying this to be an understatement. "He wavered. It was my promise to bring you here, to this corner of Purgatory that solidified him."  
  
Ran's fingers reached out to touch Youji's rain damp curls, to brush them back from a face that seemed so serene that nothing could ever have troubled it. "I thought Purgatory was a place between Heaven and Hell where people suffered until they paid for their sins and could go to Heaven." "Perhaps it was," Judas said, his smile hiding more than it told. "But there was a little rebellion. Now it's mine. I will leave you with him. I will come if you call. If he will not wake, I will come for you."  
  
Slowly, unconscious of the movement, Ran sank to his knees, soaking his pants, his shirt as he leaned against the mossy bed. Fingers traveled down to Youji's lips, which looked so naked without a cigarette, a smirk, some rude comment. "You're not an asshole, Youji," Ran whispered, "You're brave and vibrant. You're beautiful, Kudou Youji, beautiful and kind. You kept me waking up in the mornings because I knew I'd see you some time during the day. I knew you'd make me angry, make me feel. I love your stupid goldfish. Youji," Ran whispered, "I searched the world over for you, Hell, and Heaven, and I've promised myself to some rebellion that I don't know a thing about. So you'd bloody well better wake up. You hear me?"  
  
The angelic Youji gave no real sign of hearing, waking, only his lips parted and he sighed softly. Ran ran his fingers over those lips, so much softer than they'd ever been in the shop, ever been on a mission they'd shared. Tears, they were like rain of the soul, cleaning and carrying excess emotion. "Youji, I saw your grandmother, when I was looking for you. I thought, maybe, just maybe you'd gone there. She made me awfully angry."  
  
Time passed as Ran spoke, cried, counted Youji's pulse, looking for any response. Night settled in over head and Ran lay down on the bed of moss, soaked and chilled. "Alright, Youji," he said, forcing himself into the sleeping man's arms. "You've slept for a month. You were always happiest asleep or seducing someone. Just let me sleep with you, alright? The world is a dangerous and ugly place. Aya-chan is safe and happy now, as much as anyone in the world. Ken and Omi have each other, and I can not bear the loneliness that's followed me since you fell into that hole. I can't stop what came awake in my heart for you, Youji. So let me into your dream. Let me lay here in this no where and sleep with you."  
  
"Okay," a sleepy voice purred against his ear, then the tip of a tongue flicked out and licked the back of his ear.  
  
"Ack!" Ran sat bolt up right and grabbed Youji's arm. "You licked me!"  
  
Rain darkened lashes trembled and then green eyes opened. So slowly, as if he'd not moved in so long, as if his muscles were slowly coming back from being stone. "You didn't want me to?"  
  
"Youji! You're awake!" Ran took Youji's face between his hands, smiling, searching those eyes. "You can lick me any where you want! Just don't leave me!"  
  
One black wing reached, stretched, the very tip shivering, then it moved forward to lay on Ran's shoulder, to draw him down. "Lay with me, sleep for just a little longer. I feel so weak."  
  
"You almost died! Really died!" Ran accused, letting himself be pulled back down next to Youji in the wet. "We're in trouble, Youji. There is some kind of war and we're caught in the middle."  
  
"I want to lick your ear again," Youji whispered. "I don't know anything of wars, but I feel like I've waited a lifetime to lick your ear, to kiss you. I want to know you, your heart, your soul, to hear you cry out as you release, to taste the fruit of your passion."  
  
"Fucking poet," Ran complained, but he couldn't really deny it, this powerful pull towards the most primal of life. He rolled in Youji's arm, the tips of his eartails lighting with golden fire that did not burn either of them as Youji's wing covered them both from the rain that started again. "Beautiful fucking poet." 


	11. Chapter Twelve homecoming

Twilight Youji 12/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Author's Notes: Not all chapters can be posted to ff.net. neee I want to do this story over original too.. gonna set it in 1933, Berlin. This chapter is short..  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz, Gravitation, Gundam Wing, or Harry Potter. I'm just writing here to practice and have fun.  
  
Chapter Twelve.  
  
Omi opened the door. The rain hadn't stopped in a week. It had started right after Kens return from the meeting with Touma-san. "Aya? Youji-kun?"  
  
"Get out of the way, Omi," Aya said. "He's heavy."  
  
"Oh," Omi whispered, eyes wide. "Aya?"  
  
It had been a week, but Aya was in no mood to stand in the rain. Youji leaned against him, half conscious and half dressed. Aya held his wrist, keeping Youji's arm around his shoulder while keeping a grip on the taller man's waist band, his own arm behind Youji's naked back, under the black swan soft wings that shielded them from the wind. Those wings rose from where the tips touched the steps, to the curve of the top almost brushed the over hang of the porch. Youji's head leaned against Aya's shoulder, damp blond hair, paler than it had been, fanned out over Aya's black leather jacket.  
  
Aya hardly looked familiar, even aside from the fact that he was holding up a half naked angelic Youji. His ear tails sparked, violet sparkles of maybe fire. Sharp fangs showed when he spoke and his finger nails, now longer and stronger, glittered, sparkled even in the rain with pent up, captive flames. There weren't any chains on him, but the hems of his jeans were smoking and as Omi watched, the seam farthest from Youji caught fire, burning with an impossible blue flame. "Are you going to let us in," Aya asked through gritted teeth.  
  
Omi blinked. "Do I have a choice?"  
  
Youji's eyes snapped open, vivid green, lashes gone corn silk pale though. "Omi? What's wrong?"  
  
"Youji," Omi whispered. "Aya found you?"  
  
"Idiot," Aya snapped, his upper lip twitching as a spark jumped from the point of his elongated canine. "I don't like the rain."  
  
"Come in, come inside," Omi said, stepping out of the way. "Where did you find him?"  
  
"Aya?" Ken said, just now coming down the stairs into the green house. Sounding more concerned, as Aya hauled Youji out of the rain. "Aya? Youji?"  
  
"Who were you expecting?" Youji teased, trying to stand up, now that they were in out of the rain. His shoulders bunched up, the tops of his wings shivered, then the shiver rippled down over black feathers, shifting water outwards, downwards, until the very tips fluttered throwing off water.  
  
"Youji!" Omi complained, moving away form him, even as Aya did the same. Youji looked at them innocent, seemingly unaware of his wings, until they stretched out just a bit to each side, shivered down the whole length, then snapped back in tight.  
  
Much drier now, even if his chest felt frozen to little nubs. "What? You're not afraid of a little water are you now? You weren't expecting us? For shame."  
  
"You were gone for quite a while, Youji," Ken said, moving closer to Omi. "And you weren't in the best of health last time we saw you."  
  
Omi reached out to catch Youji's hand, an apologetic smile on his face, only to find Aya's hand in the way. "Don't touch."  
  
"Why?" Omi said.  
  
Youji, one wing shivering, but not from cold, leaned forward just a little, so Omi could see his breath when he spoke. The words left his lips in a gray mist, so subtle it was hard to really say if one saw it or not. "Because I'm still a wraith, and I'm hungry."  
  
"Oh," Omi said, backing up into Ken.  
  
"Then why the fuck are you here," Ken snapped, his visible hand closing into a fist.  
  
Aya's hand fell to Youji's wrist, drawing him back from the other too. "We're here because this is home. The world is about to fuck itself beyond recognition and we thought it would be better if it did that without taking you two and my sister down the drain with it."  
  
Omi lifted an arm, baring Ken from lunging forward. "Explain."  
  
"Let's sit down. There isn't much time. Youji and I have a mission as well."  
  
"Shall I make some tea?" Omi offered. "Coffee," Youji corrected. "I'm going upstairs for a shirt. Ken, you didn't pawn my stuff, did you?"  
  
"Asshole," Ken said, without any great malice. "I'd like to see you get a one of those fuck me shirts you wear on over those wings."  
  
"Just watch me," Youji said, laughing as he bowed enough to get his wings through the door. "Just watch me." 


	12. Youji's Window

Twilight Youji 13/?  
  
By Nix Winter  
  
Author's Notes:  
  
Disclaimers: I don't own Weiss Kreuz, Gravitation, Gundam Wing, or Harry Potter. I'm just writing here to practice and have fun.  
  
Chapter 13 (there are 10 on ff.net, counting the prologue. There is one that can't be on ff.net.)  
  
Omi and Ken had gone to sleep, sometime close to dawn. Youji didn't think either of them believed anything Aya had had to say. Hell. Heaven? Hell. He didn't believe half of it either, and he'd not only been to Purgatory, but had big assed heavy angel wings growing out of his back.  
  
He didn't fit in his window anymore. It was his window, just wide enough to sit on, to prop one foot against the frame, press his back to the other side. He's spent hours sitting in his window, cigarette smoke flowing down and out through the open window. He stood there now, one hand on either side of his window, wings spread out, relaxed, and blocking the rising sunlight for a good two feet on either side. The cigarette hung lazily from his lips, smoke filling his mouth, then slipping free over a lax lower lip. The window didn't fit him anymore. The cigarette didn't even taste good.  
  
How much time had passed since he'd come back into the green house with fossilized angel heart shoved in his gut, Youji wasn't real sure. Omi had said a week. How long he'd spent sleeping in Purgatory, he wasn't sure. He was sure that he hadn't had a moment or a cigarette. He pushed the smoke out, and just stood there, holding the burning cigarette between his fingers, wrist against his forehead.  
  
It was one fucking week. He'd died, pretty much. Being a wraith, even one with angel wings wasn't the same thing as being alive. Aya had kissed him, and Youji had suddenly understood why Marilyn Monroe held no real seduction for him. He took another draw on his cigarette, drawing in bland smoke, letting it settle down into his lungs, hoping this time it would give him a jolt, a little fucking comfort. It didn't give him anything, but as he drew the smoke in, fingers touching his lips, he thought about kissing Aya. He blew out a smoke ring, and whispered, "With this ring, I thee wed."  
  
Only they'd have a wedding like that. He blew the smoke out slowly. It hurt to smile and he didn't know why he was crying. The first image that came to him was Aya going in his arms, Aya heavy, and knowing the bullet had gone through into Aya. Tears came then. He knew Aya wasn't gone, wasn't dead, but he also knew he'd felt him die, felt his body collapse, release the life in it. His mind played the moments over, trying to find some answers in it, to find the thread of himself in all the changes.  
  
There had been the agony of his wings when they'd erupted from his back, new bones and flesh forming. Worse agony had followed, that wraith woman tearing at his wings. He'd had to sweep up the damn feathers himself. The blood splatters weren't likely to come out of the wood now. Ken had said they'd been upset. "I guess you were, sweetlings," he hissed, throwing his cigarette out the open window into the gravel below.  
  
All of that was more than Youji could deal with, even with the sweet hours, days, that had followed between he and Aya. Standing there, the rising sun warming the inside of his wings, he realized, those were the hours that really shifted his world around. He didn't deserve Aya's love, Aya's commitment. Aya never did anything half way, never went after something just a little. Youji leaned forward and leaned his forehead against the window he couldn't sit in anymore. "Aya. Ran. I'm a fucking slut, you know that right?"  
  
There wasn't anyone in his room to hear him though. Omi and Ken slept, and Ran had gone to find his sister. They had about twelve hours until the end of the world. Youji pressed his palm against the glass.  
  
"Youji."  
  
He straightened, drew his wings in, before turning. His shirt didn't reach to his belly button, but it did cover his arms, did lace up both sides, coving most of his ribs. His pants were skin tight, laced up the front, shimmering fabric. If he had to wear a club shirt to get it over and around his damn wings, he was going to wear club pants too, he'd decided. Seeing Aya, Ran, standing there in the door to his room, he tightened all over, his wings drawing tight, focusing the new day's sunlight into blond hair. No one Youji had ever loved had affected him the way Ran just standing in his door way, jeans and a tee-shirt did. It made him wish deeply he had put on a longer shirt.  
  
"Did you find her?"  
  
"Yes," Ran stepped into the room. "I found her. Youji."  
  
Youji felt blush flash over his cheeks as he looked down, half instinctively hiding his face in a wing. Ran lost some semblance of his humanity, flames dancing up his ear tails, as he crossed to Youji. "I know what you're thinking, angel," Aya hissed, low, snarling, sunlight pale flames dancing over his palm as he reached for Youji's face, palm cupping his cheek. There was no one else Ran Fujimiya could touch, not in a way that was not flash. This touch was more than a masquerade. "Youji, if there were only one person I could touch in all of the earth, and I could chose who that would be. It would be you. Maybe that is why we have survived to be what we are now. Youji, do not think ugly thoughts about yourself. It hurts me."  
  
Tears mixing with flames tickled Youji's cheek. "How can you love me?"  
  
"You? You're easy. You didn't get wings for nothing, Youji. Don't doubt that I love you."  
  
Never had he felt both so large, and so small. "Ran, I'm not used to being an angel. It was just so easier when I was fighting to safe you, but now, not it's just normal and I can't sit in my window anymore." Unafraid of demonic fire flicking over Ran's palm, he kissed him. "I expected to just screw my way through a harem and die unseen."  
  
"I see you, Youji. I see you clean through. And I love you anyway."  
  
Youji smiled against the flames on Ran's palm. "I believe you. How are we going to save the world?"  
  
"Judas is downstairs. He has some ideas about that." Ran said as he moved Youji's kiss from palm to his lips, "Aya-chan is making him breakfast. I thought I would feed you myself."  
  
Youji found himself pressed into the window, wings wrapping around them both. Some kinds of demon energy seemed to feed a wraith's hunger very well, or maybe it was just Youji needs were met by touching Ran. Judas could wait a little while, and so could the world. 


End file.
